LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


PRINCETON. N. J. 


PRESENTED BY 


Herbert Adams Gibbons. 


Bro ti? 4 829.4898 
Schermerhorn, Martin 
Kellogg, 1841-1923. 

Renascent Christianity, a 
forecast of the Twentieth 


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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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ANNOUNCEMENT. 


TWO IMPORTANT VOLUMES. 


BY “A CLERGYMAN.” 
(Now ready.) 


1.— RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, A FORECAST OF THE 20TH 
CENTURY.” 


[Widely known clergymen and other scholars who are among 
the leading representatives of Broad Church Christianity in Eng- 
land and America, to whom proof-sheet copies were sent for ad- 
vance reviews, returned hearty commendations which will be 
found in full on the opening pages. | 


“An earnest attempt to show that the Christianity of Jesus 
and of his Apostles was eclectic, and so Catholic or universal ; 
that from the close of the second century has prevailed a ‘tend- 
ency to revert and degenerate,’ which accounts for all the super- 
stitions and errors of the historic Church; and that all sectarian 
divisions, including that between reasonable Trinitarians and 
conservative Unitarians, may be healed by going back to “the 
truth as it is in Jesus.’”’ 


“ This ts a brave, true, manly piece of work.” 

“ 4 breadth which emulates the Christianity of the late Bishop 
Brooks.” 

“ God speed to the potent new volume.” 
2.—NEW EDITION OF “ ANCIENT SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE 

WORLD.” 

[From a large number of scholarly reviews, made by some of 
our most reliable Newspapers and Periodicals, brief selections 
have been made and will be found, highly commending the vol- 
ume, on the opening pages. 


“An eloquent argument for that Catholicity which rises above 
creeds.” 

“A valuable addition to every library.” 

“ Tt cannot fail to arouse interest.” 


The two are designed as companion volumes. The first is 
designated as “ The Old Faith in Modern Form,” and the sec- 
ond as “ The Old Religion in Modern Words.” 


Uniform in size and style, large octavo of nearly 450 pages; 
extra paper and type. Price per volume, $2.50 and $2.00 ac- 
cording to binding. 

#,% For sale by all booksellers. Sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 
the Publishers. 

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, PUBLISHERS 


27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET, NEW YORK ; 
24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, LONDON, 


I 


SAVOLRI LY 


STIMULATED BY SELF-FORGETFULNESS AND DIRECTED 
BY INTELLIGENCE IS THE SOURCE OF ALL VIRTUES, 


The Creed and Pledge which are given on the following 
page may be found, with explanations, on pages 37 and 38 
of “ Renascent Christianity.” They are repeated here with 
the hope that they may attract especial attention and also as 
a suitable connection of the two volumes, “‘ Ancient Sacred 
Scriptures of the World” and “ Renascent Christianity,” 
both of which have been prepared as their amplification and 
enforcement. 


In the ancient cathedral of Lubeck, in Germany, there is 
an old slab with the following inscription : 


“Thus speaketh Christ our Lord to us: 
Ye call me Master, and obey me not; 
Ye call me Light, and see me not ; 

Ye call me Way, and walk me not ; 

Ye call me Life, and desire me not ; 
Ye call me Wise, and follow me not ; 
Ye call me Fair, and love me not ; 

Ye call me Rich, and ask me not; 

Ye call me Eternal, and seek me not ; 
Ye call me Gracious, and trust me not ; 
Ye call me Noble, and serve me not ; 
Ye call me Mighty, and honor me not ; 
Ye call me Just, and fear me not; 

If I condemn you, blame me not.” 


INSINCERITY 


STIMULATED BY SELF-LOVE AND DIRECTED BY IGNO- 
RANCE 1S THE SOURCE OF ALL SINS, 


CMETOLIG CEURCH CREED 


AND 


VL DIG es (iy lois ICOM Saha 


PORSTHE BWENTIETH CENTURY 


end 


bd 


4 


bd 


Looe 


bead 


— 


me 


I 


BELIEVE 


BELIEVE 


BELIEVE 


BELIEVE 


BELIEVE 


BELIEVE 


PROMISE 


PROMISE 


PROMISE 


PROMISE 


PROMISE 


PROMISE 


NESS. 


CREED 
IN THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 
IN THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS THE CHRIST. 
IN THE GUIDANCE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 
IN THE CLEAN HEART. 
IN THE SERVICE OF LOVE. 


IN THE UNWORLDLY LIFE. 


PLEDGE 
TO TRUST GOD AND LOVE HIM SUPREMELY. 
TO TAKE MY CROSS AND FOLLOW THE CHRIST. 
TO ACCEPT THE HOLY SPIRIT AS MY GUIDE. 
TO FORGIVE AND LOVE MY ENEMIES. 
TO LOVE MY FELLOW MEN AS MYSELF, 


TO HUNGER AND THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUS- 


‘ we ie) 
oy Ge LRT? 


ADVANCE REVIEWS. 


 DENASCENT CHRISTIANITY.—A FORECAST OF THE 20TH 
CENTURY.” 


Of twelve widely known clergymen and other scholars who are 
among the leading representatives of Broad Church Ces 
in England and in America, to whom “ proof-sheet copies ’’ were 
sent for advance reviews, eleven responded as follows : 


[Zhe MSS. of the reviews with the names of the reviewers are 
held by the publishers. | 


1.—‘‘ The cycle of the Seasons is typical of the cycle of the Centuries. In each 
is a Seed-time, a Summer, a Harvesting, and a Winter, during which a silent 
redistribution of values takes place, undiscovered till the Spring proclaims a 
re-incarnation. 

‘Renascent Christianity, A Forecast of the Twentieth Century,’ is essen- 
tially a prophecy and a warning that the Spring-time of the Centuries is at hand. 

It is, as well, a plea, that in things spiritual, we shall not be caught napping, 
secure in the pride of place and privilege, when the Sun of Universal Truth 
shall cast its light into the most hidden places and illume and lay bare their 
secrets. 

With a breadth which emulates the Christianity of the late Bishop Brooks ; 
with a scorn for that miserable self-love which, like a miasma, infects all it 
touches, the author makes Sincerity the touch-stone of religious unity and wel- 
comes into a common fraternity all those who are intelligently sincere. 

Science, long since, proclaimed the necessary unity of Truth. It is but now, 
however, that the ‘ Higher Criticism of the Bible and the study of Compara- 
tive Religion’ has revealed to earnest students of Religion and Theology the 
same unity within their own sphere. 

The author also emphasizes the dominant disaster of our day, as it has been 
that of other days of superlative progress and proficiency in things material. 
He sees, as other seers have seen, the monster Money, lying twined about the 
root of the modern tree-of-troubles. 

Everywhere the corrupting influence of huge wealth has extended its perni- 
nious tentacles, until neither the Church nor the State remains pure and undefiled. 

It is indeed time that a halt were called, and this appeal by ‘a clergyman’ 


4 


a 


ADVANCE REVIEWS. 5 


may, at least by its sincerity and outspoken candor, attract attention in those 
quarters which would be deaf to all ordinary petitions. 
It is with this hope that all will bid God-speed to this potent new volume.” 


2,—‘* This volume called ‘ Renascent Christianity,’ is written with prophetic 
earnestness. Itisa plea for a return to the ‘truth as it isin Jesus.’ Its plea is 
based upon the novel ground that his teachings were eclectic and resumed in 
their simplicity all that was best in the world’s sacred scriptures. This idea 
suggests that Christianity is a p/eroma containing all that is best in all the other 
great religions of the world. The author’s spirit is essentially catholic and 
irenic, and invites the codperation of all liberal-minded people of whatever creed. 
He is very stern in his indictment of those ‘ reversions,’ as he calls them, that 
have changed the character of Christianity from its original purity. Would 
not ‘corruptions’ be a better word than ‘ reversions’? More bent on driving 
home his message than on making a literary impression, he has drawn liberally 
on many writers for the confirmation of his principle. 

The patience and the diligence that have gone into the structure of the book 
cannot be praised too much, and I sincerely trust that they will meet with their 
reward in a wide and cordial recognition of the spirit and the purpose of his 
work,” 


3.—‘'' The subject of the book is one which must command the interest of all 
men who are in earnest about religion. The care, and reverence, and scholarly 
training with which the author has treated it will deserve respect and, it seems 
to me, interest among all faithful and conservative scholars.” 


4.—‘' This is a brave, true, manly piece of work. Brave—because it is so 
out-spoken as almost certainly to displease those who care chiefly for con- 
formity and quiet. True—so true in its intents and purposes as to silence all 
questions of entire intellectual agreement. Manly—in that its breadth of 
sympathy is as wide as the world and excludes no child of the Heavenly Father. 

Whether it is really the original Christianity or not this author so earnestly 
portrays, it is something so fine and sweet that all loving hearts will wish its 
purpose may be realized. 

I welcome its clear challenge to intellectual as well as moral seriousness. 
Give us all this earnestness, this conservatism, this divine and all-inclusive 
sympathy and we may courageously and cheerfully lift up the cry—‘ Zhe King- 
dom of Heaven is at hand,’”’ 


5.—‘* I respond with gratitude and ‘ God-speed.’ So far as I gather from your 
line of thought and of argument, it seems to me the defense of a thesis to which 
the corrupters of the Religion of Jesus will find it difficult to make an answer.” 


¥ 


6 ADVANCE REVIEWS. 
ek oe st ns A de a 
6.—'' Renascent Christianity is the title of a book whichis a sign of the times, 


It is one more expression of the movement within Christianity towards a new 
birth—a reformation, a reconstruction of thought and of life. That there is 
such a movement at work in our midst, goes without saying. Every worthy ex- 
pression of this movement is an added impetus to it. Such a work is that 
which aptly takes its title from this great tendency of our times. 

The author, himself a Catholic Christian in the true sense of the word— 
having in his experience personally known widely diverse forms of Christianity, 
and found the common Christianity which is at the heart of them—wisely in- 
terprets the movement which he feels within his own spirit and recognizes all 
about him. He seeks to go back of Christianity to the Christ ; back of institu- 
tionalism and dogmatic theology, to the life which gave birth alike to institu- 
tions and to systems of thought. He finds in the later developments of theology 
and ecclesiasticism much that is in the nature of a degeneration, Renewed life 
is, in his judgment, to be found in retracing the steps of thought and life back 
to the primal fount. To open this is to effect a regeneration of Christianity. 

There is no question that in this he rightly expresses a wide-spread tend- 
ency of the times. Back through doctors and priests, through school-men and 
fathers and apostles to Jesus himself—this is the cry on every hand. In inter- 
preting this original Christianity, the author shows himself in sympathy with 
the best tendencies of the movement which he expresses. 

Intellectually he is a liberal of the liberals, While conservative in holding 
to the historic form of thought, the form of sound words, he is a liberal in 
reading those forms in the light of the truest and highest thought—that is the 
simplest and most essential thought of Christianity. How liberal the book is 
let two passages suffice to show. ‘ What then are the original sources of Chris- 
tianity? All the Holy Teachings of all the Religions of the World.’ Jesus the 
Christ was ‘ conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary,’ in the 
sense that all who on earth shall attain to perfect holiness, must be ‘ conceived in 
Holiness, and born of a pure mother in particular and of a pure ancestry in 
general,’ 

While thus intellectually broad, he is ethical and spiritual, as must needs 
be the case with one who would go back to the Master. The book is instinct 
throughout with spiritual vitality,—the vitality of the teachings of Jesus. It is 
constructive and not merely destructive. It makes for a living faith. 

The form in which the book is cast—that of short sections, intelligently 
headed—makes it easy for the average reader to follow understandingly its logi- 
cal development. 


The book is one which ought to help on the renascence of Christianity.” 


7.—‘* Renascent Christianity is the suggestive title of a volume whose ad- 
vance pages I have examined. ‘The author is evidently a man of wide observa- 
tion and of many subjective experiences. He writes with fine flashes of insight, 
from the promptings of serious convictions, and with a passionate desire to recall 
Christianity to the simplicity of the Christ—the Christ of the ages and of the 
Saint ; the Christ of Nature and of Grace. 


ADVANCE REVIEWS. 7 
PRLS ERAT RR ROOST OLA nae LAP Fan le eco EAE 
Neither churchmen, dissenters, nor so-called liberals will agree with all the 
writer says. He waves away the churches with a scourge of small cords, and 
lays about him somewhat indiscriminately. But even those who read with re- 
sentment will be obliged to whet their eye-beams, to look sharply around and 
within, and to ask if these things are so.” 


8.—‘‘ I have been deeply interested in reading the scholarly work entitled 
Renascent Christianity, There is evidence on every page of a deep desire to 
ascertain the truth, and a fervid purpose to set that truth forth accurately for 
the benefit of Christianity. Students of historical religion are well aware that 
the original gospel has been greatly perverted. Simplicity has been sacrificed 
to mystery, and intricate intellectual process substituted for spiritual insight ; 
formalism has usurped the place of sincerity, and the broad message of Jesus 
has been narrowed to doctrinal and sectarian purposes, 

He who ably presents the facts in this great matter, with stirring argu- 
ments and illustrations, is placing the modern thoughtful world under great 
obligations. The author of this admirable work has approached his task with 
combined earnestness and catholicity. He seeks to obtain the truth from errors, 
and with a sympathetic touch passes in review the degeneration which has oc- 
curred in Christianity. With no uncertain accent, he sounds the notes of 
warning at the same time. 

There is evidence throughout of wide reading, and a throng of witnesses is 
summoned to attest the correctness of the positions herein maintained. 

Such a volume ought to aid very much in clearing up misunderstanding 
with regard to genuine Christianity. It will thereby assist in directing more 
wisely the vast energies of the true gospel, and point out the quicker fulfilment 
of its glorious possibilities.” 


g.—‘‘I hardly feel warranted in giving an opinion upon the treatment of sub- 
jects of so much importance where (on account of sickness) I have only had 
time to glance over the pages. But of this I feel quite sure, that, from your 
own experiences in the theological world, you cannot fail to give a broad, un- 
sectarian, impartial, and truly religious view of what the Twentieth Century 
will ask in these matters.” 


10.—‘‘ You certainly treat your subject from the right point of view, and your 
position is an impregnable one. I wish I had time to read the plate-proof Copy 
more thoroughly, so as to be able to express myself more fully. 

I thank you for your kindness in submitting it to me.” 


11.—[The following letter, written by his own hand, will explain 
why one of the twelve chosen was unable to review this volume. 
It will also be, in itself, of wide and permanent interest because 
of the venerable age as well as the exceptional intelligence and 
influence of the writer. | 


8 ADVANCE REVIEWS. 
ernie ati Rtas Sie) ei nl) ae OL Aaa ake Na Mle Hae Sk 
‘¢ THe POLCHAR, ROTHIEMURCHUS, ABIEMORE, SCOTLAND, 
‘October 21, 1897. 


ae 


. . « Ihave not forgotten our former correspondence with reference to 
the Memorial Church in Newport, R. I., and the best mode of turning to ac- 
count for future generations the characteristics of Dr. Channing’s thought and 
life. I rejoice to know that you are still engaged in the same work at an ulte- 
rior stage, and are bringing out this goodly volume in prosecution of it. I shall 
address myself eagerly to the study of it, if not too soon overtaken by ‘ the 
night in which no man can work.’ 

But in my 93d year, moving through my tasks at the slackened pace of a 
spent life, how can I expect or promise to qualify myself for an adequate re- 
view of a Treatise so comprehensive as is this one entitled Renascent Chris- 
tianity. Were, on my study table before me, there are already in advance of 
yours seven or eight elaborate productions, of as many thousand pages ; English, 
French, German, Dutch, sent me by their authors and waiting for review and 
judgment, which I cannot hope to give. 

It is imperatively necessary for me to contract my remaining attempts 
within very narrow limits,—hardly going beyond the revision of my own re- 
prints. I must not therefore undertake the office with which you entrust me. 
In declining it my comfort is, that with such allies as you cannot 
possibly gain anything from a worn-out co-worker that has dropped into the 
past. Nor canI think of any one whose good word would secure more atten- 
tion for the volume than its own contents, with their lucid presentations, will 
of themselves secure. 


Though spared most of the infirmities of old age, I find the still-increas- 
ing claims upon me,—apparently a man made up of leisure,—more than I can 
meet. I have to depend on the forbearance of my friends for the many invol- 
untary neglects with which I have to reproach myself. 

I remain, with best wishes and thanks, 

Yours very truly, 
JAMES MARTINEAU.” 


NOTE. 


The omission of names of Advance Reviewers, as of nearly all the recent 
Authors quoted from in this volume, has been especially assented to by all the 
parties concerned, This, as elsewhere explained, is not because of anyone’s 
unwillingness to openly avow his sentiments; but rather to favor the strong 
desire of the Author that no names should be used in the entire volume except 
as some unusual demands of revered age, or high office, or copyright regulations 
should render it advisable or imperative. 

THE AUTHOR. 


Epiphany, 1898. 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 9 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 


Among other volumes named elsewhere in the following pages from which 
citations, with the above understanding, have been made are those which follow: 
‘Studies of the Inner Kingdom,” ‘‘ Things New and Old,” ‘* Talks About 
Jesus,” ‘* Faith and Self-Surrender,” * God and Christ,” ‘‘ Our Heredity from 
God,” ‘‘ The Life in Common,” ‘‘ The Man Jesus,” ‘* What is the Bible we 

For these and all other helps, cordially extended for the preparation and 
issue of this volume, sincere thanks are here publicly offered. 

Acknowledgments are hereby made, with thanks, to the following publish- 
ers: E. P. Dutton & Co., D. Appleton & Co., Geo. Ellis & Co., American 
Unitarian Association, Merrill & Baker, The Macmillan Co., Longmans, Green, 
& Co. Especial acknowledgments and thanks are due, and hereby are made, to 
Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. for their generous permission for the use of several of 
the shorter poems of John G. Whittier, but in particular of those used on pages 
147-150 to form the ‘‘ Model Sketch of Our Recent Prophet-Bard.” 


THE AUTHOR. 
Epiphany, 1898. 


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RRENASCENT CHRISTIANITY 


A FORECAST OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 


INSTHEPLIGHTLOR 


HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE 
STUDY OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


AND OF THE 
UNIVERSAL PRAYER FOR RELIGIOUS UNITY 


BY 
A CLERGYMAN Mactin Ke) 


During the past twelve years Rector in Succession of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal 
Chivch! Arlington, Mass., and of St. Mark’s (Irving Memorial) Church 
Tarrytown-on-Hudson, N. Y.; Formerly Pastor in Succession 
of Channing Memorial Church, Newport, R. I., and 
of Church of the Unity, Boston, Mass. 


AUTHOR OF 
** ANCIENT SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE WORLD,” ETC. 


ANNO CHRISTI 1898-2000 


G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 


NEW YORK LONDON 
27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET STRAND 


Ghe Anicherbocher Press 
1898 


COPYRIGHT, 1897 
BY 
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 


Ube Knickerbocker Press, Hew Work 


TO HER WHO FOR NEARLY THIRTY YEARS HAS BEEN 
THE SYMPATHETIC COMPANION OF MY LIFE 
AND 
TO OUR ONLY ONE WHO HAS GROWN 
TO BE MY CHIEF LITERARY HELPER 
DO 


HEREBY AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME 


‘* Ye shall know Truth and Truth shall make you free.” ‘‘ Stand fast there- 
fore in the Liberty wherewith the Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled 
again with the yoke of bondage.” 


‘* He is the freeman whom the Truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside.” 


‘** The voice mysterious, which whoso hears 
Must think on what has been and what will be.” 


‘* Often as thy inward ear 
Catches such rebounds, beware— 
Listen, ponder, hold them dear ; 
For of God—of God they are.” 


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PREFATORY NOTES. 


1. Thus far in the Evolution of Mankind the credulous 
has prevailed, to the repression and almost universal exclu- 
sion of the critical, especially so with reference to all sub- 
jects relating to Religion. By the “critical” is not meant 
ignorant rejection or unbelief, much less the scoffing spirit of 
Infidelity or the scorning spirit of Agnosticism: but a tend- 
ency Zo look into things, a spirit and habit of zzspection. This 
was the original meaning of those shining words of the Bible 
—Prophet, Apostle, Bishop; they were names for those 
who were supposed to be inspectors or lookers-into-things. 


This of course refers to the generic meaning of the words. Their original 
significance was true to their derivation so long as Bible Religion was *’ pure 
and undefiled.” Every recognized Prophet of the Old Testament, Apostle of 
the New, and Bishop of the first century was a ‘‘ Skeptic” in such a pro- 
nounced sense of that word (in its generic meaning) as to be a “‘ heretic,” 
an ‘‘infidel” even, to the popular or ‘‘ orthodox” party of his generation. 
When Christianity began to degenerate there were no more Prophets (except 
‘‘ false Prophets”), no more Apostles, and the word Bishop grew to mean a 
mere overseer or an official director of dogmatic and ecclesiastical affairs. 


This critical spirit can only exist in highly evolved indi- 
viduals, and can only prevail widely in highly evolved 
periods. Such individuals have been all those ¢rwe Prophets, 
Apostles, and Bishops who (in all the Past and in every form 
of Religion) have ‘‘ turned the world upside down” in its 
superstitions, stupidities, and sins; and have striven to in- 
augurate the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth through the 
agency of their Protestantisms, Revolutions, and Reforms. 
Thus far in History there has been no period so highly 
evolved as to enable this critical spirit to prevail widely. 
Most nearly approximating it were the first and second cen- 
turies and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the 
Christian Era. (The periods of the Buddhistic, Socratic, Is- 
lamistic, and of the more ancient Confucian and Zoroastrian 
Reforms were approximations also; but limited in aspir- 
ations and local in attempts.) 


Vv 


vi PREFATORY NOTES. 
Ceo eae we eS ee 

But now, all the signs of the times indicate that the 
Evolution of Mankind has reached such an elevated stage as 
to render it possible to inaugurate a Protestantism of the 
devoutly and reverently Critical that shall so widely prevail 
over the zgnorantly and degradingly Credulous as to virtually 
establish that Kingdom of Heaven upon Earth which John 
the Baptist, Jesus, and the Apostles introduced: and which 
the Protestant Reforms of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries re-introduced. This conviction has so taken pos- 
session of the author as to be the compelling motive of every 
sermon preached, article written, and word of instruction 
spoken during the entire thirty years of his unceasing service 
as Minister of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ. He has ever 
tried to be a ¢rue Skeptic, that is, a devout and reverent 
looker-into-things. Moreover, he has increasingly believed 
that, in a new and wider sense than ever before, the King- 
dom of Heaven is at hand. This belief finally suggested 
(as a possible forward-helping) this volume and dictated its 
contents—“ Renascent Christianity, A Forecast of the Twen- 
tieth Century.” 

Renascent means reviving, renewing, or newly springing 
up. Renascent Christianity, therefore, means Original Chris- 
tianity (2. ¢., Christianity as taught by Jesus and his Apostles), 
reviving, renewing or springing up anew. 

Explanatory of the general title is the additional one, A 
Forecast of the Twentieth Century. Forecast implies fore- 
sight: and foresight means power to foretell or to prophesy. 
In this sense this volume is a prophecy of the zd of 
Christianity that will prevail (or begin to prevail) in the 
Twentieth Century. 


After the entire body of this volume was in permanent type, and these Pre- 
fatory Notes were in the printer’s hands, the following met the author’s eye for 
the first time: (‘‘ Our Heredity from God.”’) 

‘“There is in human evolution also a great deal of what may be termed 
periodicity. Ideas and lines of thought run their courses in given periods. 
Religions have from the outset had a period of about five hundred years. 
Brahminism, itself a reformation of an antecedent faith, burst out simultane- 
ously over Asia about 2000 B.c. The law-giving by Manu in Southern Asia, 
by Tschow in Eastern Asia, and by Moses in Western Asia, was spontaneous 


PREFATORY NOTES. Vil 


and simultaneous about 1400 and 1500 B.c._ The song and psalm era of David 
and Homer was about 1000 B.c. Buddha in India, Confucius in China, So- 
crates in Greece, flashed forth about 500 B.c. Five hundred years later, Jesus, 
concentering all lines of evolution, symbolized the cosmopolitan unity of all 
future development. 500 to 600 A.D, the papacy was established, and Moham- 
med began his crusade of monotheism. 1000 A.D. the completed hierarchy was 
established by Hildebrand ; 1500 A.D. the Reformation by Luther was kindled. 
As we near 2000, it seems certain that we are approaching the culmination and 
establishment of the age of Reason as the basis of Faith. . . . Through all 
these revolutions has there been evolution ; and all religions have moved on 
The King’s Highway to higher hopes and purer purposes.” 

2. The Author would classify himself as to Ecclesiasti- 
cism, Ritual, and Dogmatic Theology among the broadest of 
“Broad Churchmen.” Episcopal Order of Government, so 
long as it does not degenerate into a tyranny of dictation or 
of control; Liturgical Worship, so long as it is intellectually 
sincere and spiritually elevating; Historic Theology, so long 
as it neither adds to nor takes from the simple teachings of 
Jesus the Christ, are all heartily accepted. Though much 
disliking (on account of their bigoted and persecuting asso- 
ciations) the words Churchmanship, Orthodoxy, and Trin- 
itarianism, their truths (so far as they are clearly those 
enunciated by Jesus the Christ) are eagerly retained, while 
their errors are as eagerly rejected. The well-known Rector 
of Grace Church, New York City, has recently defined the 
position tersely and well—“ Such unclassifiable thinkers are 
by no means so numerous within our ecclesiastical borders 
as might be wished. They come under the same sort of 
suspicion as that which overshadows the ‘ independent voter’ 
in politics. Nevertheless their abiding in the ship inures to 
the benefit of the voyage. We are stronger and richer with 
them than we could be without them.” 

Among the last written words of the late Professor 
Henry Drummond were the following: 

“The characteristics of Christianity are that it deals with 
the roots of things, with the heart and life; that it holds 
sacred the aspiration and the wants of man and man him- 
self; that it recognizes above all social distinctions the uni- 
versal brotherhood of the race, and over all legislation the 
one Golden Rule of Christ. While claiming no monopoly 


Vill PREFATORY NOTES. 

ae oo eh SP binds user! 8 ee re 
of this high spirit for Christian Liberalism, is it unfair to 
point out that the interests of Conservatism hitherto have 
been more centred on institutions than on men? Is it 
untrue to say that it has sought its sanctions in tradition 
rather than in the sense of justice and the educated intelli- 
gence of the people?” 

Among the latest public utterances of Dr. John Watson 
are the following: 

“ When a preacher offers the beautiful verities of Christ 
and His salvation as the hereditary treasure of our race, then 
is the soul captivated and made eager for their acceptance. 
What it has long been seeking for, as in a mist, has now 
been revealed; what it has bitterly cried out for, as in a dry 
and thirsty land, is now within reach. When a preacher 
gathers together various elements of the Christian faith and 
demands that one should accept them all and at once with 
an alternative of punishment, then the kindly evangel is held 
as a pistol to the head and human nature is apt to rebel. 

“The Gospel is never negative—an embodied threat— 
‘refuse if you dare’; the Gospel is ever positive—a living 
promise, ‘Come and be blessed.’ 

“Beyond all question and by the consent of all men the 
Bible has a voice of peculiar and irresistible majesty. Like 
the deep, mellow sound of a bell floating out from a cathe- 
dral tower on the violet sky of Italy and arresting for a brief 
moment at least the confused babel of the carnival below, so 
does the bell note of this book fall on the restless questions 
and fretful anxieties of the soul. MHearers are of a sudden 
hushed into reverence and are graciously inclined to sub- 
mission, not by the ipse dixit of a fallible preacher, but 
because the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.” 

In a sermon recently preached by a scholarly “ Trini- 
tarian”’ clergyman in Columbus, Ohio, occurs the following : 

“ The truth is that whatever extravagance may be charged 
against the Higher Criticism, it has made it impossible for 
any intelligent Biblical scholar to hold the view of the Bible 
that was taught to me when I was studying for the ministry 
and that is held by a great majority of our church members 


PREFATORY NOTES. ix 


to-day. That view is simply not true. The Bible is not the 
kind of a book that we once believed it to be. It is a better 
book, a diviner book as I believe; and the people of our 
churches have a right to know just what kind of a book 
tds 

A distinguished clergyman of the “ Trinitarian” Faith, in 
a recent sermon preached in the city of New York, said: 

“We are approaching an hour in the history of religious 
faith that may be called the hour before a revolution. All 
writers, speakers and thinkers are dealing with the subject. 

“The day is at hand when the world must have a better 
interpretation of the Bible. The popular education of the 
people has been such that a revolution of faith is inevitable. 

“New theology means the sum total of the aggressive 
thinking of centuries. This revolution in religion will make 
men better Christians in the broader sense of the word, and 
do away with ignorance and bigotry.” 

From various recent “ orthodox” magazines and other 
periodicals have been gathered the following: 

“ Until we can put away from the minds of men the com- 
mon error that the current Christianity of the Church is true 
Christianity, we can make but little progress in converting 
' the world.” 

“Tt ‘is generally acknowledged that there needs to bea 
waking up and a reformation in the Church at large. Christ- 
ians need to be called back to the simple teachings of Jesus 
and to a Pentecostal sense of their mission for souls and for 
the world.” 

“The greatest necessity of our times is the Christzan- 
ization of Christianity. Back to Christ, back to genuine 
Christianity !—this is the John the Baptist cry of the coming 
age and ages.” 

“It is my firm belief that the Church of Christ is on the 
eve of a mighty spiritual and moral upheaval, the incoming 
of a power that will make it truly Christian and sweep the 
world forward toward the Millennial dawn. For this the 
whole Church should pray, and in expectation of it move 
forward to the speedy conquest of the world for Christ.” 


x PREFATORY NOTES. 


A renowned Professor in one of our leading American 
Universities has recently said: ‘“‘ Not a mere shifting of 
lines, but a change of base; not a mere readjustment of 
details, but a reconstruction of Christian Theology is now 
necessary. There can be little doubt in the mind of the 
thoughtful observer, that we are now on the eve of the great- 
est change in traditional beliefs that has taken place since 
the birth of Christianity. But let us not be at all disturbed 
thereby. For as then, so now, change comes xot to destroy 
but to fulfil.” 

One more citation may be made illustrative of still broader 
interpretations: those of what we may term World-The- 
ology, or the new, but already well established and widely 
studied science, known as Comparative Religion. That 
profound and honored scholar, Professor Max Miiller, a few 
years ago concluded a personal letter to the author (which 
may be found on one of the introductory pages of the vol- 
ume called Axczent Sacred Scriptures of the World) with 
these words: “There never was a false God, nor was there ever 
really a false Religion—znless one may call a child a false 
man. The true religion of the future will be the fulfilment 
of all the religions of the past—the true religion of humanity, 
that which in the struggle of history remains as the inde- ° 
structible portion of all the so-called false religions of man- 
kind.” 

The citations now made indicate the position, the method, 
and the spirit of all that will be found in the following 
pages. 

3. “The originals are not original.’”” Except in phrase, 
dress, fresh statement or re-arrangement “there is no new 
thing under the sun”—no new Thought, no xew Truth. 
Whoever professes to be “ original” displays mingled super- 
ficiality and conceit. Every wisest speaker or writer takes 
pains to say with Confucius, “I only hand on”; or with 
Jesus, “I came to fulfil.” All truth “ was in the beginning ” 
as God’s eternal Logos, “is now and ever shall be.” There 
is no more, no less; except as the expanded vision enlarges 
its Revelation or the contracted vision shuts it out. It is 


PREFATORY NOTES. xi 


all a matter of the enlargement of vision; and this is all a 
matter of clean hearts and clear minds. ‘Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with a// thy heart and mind.” All true 
Seers see the same everlasting Truth; the cleaner their 
hearts and the clearer their minds the more expansive their 
vision. No true Seer can contradict another, for he sees 
the same things. Neither can he “add unto nor take 
away from”: for Truth is a constant quantity—“the Alpha 
and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the 
last.” Neither can he turn or change it into something 
new, for Truth zs the “Father of lights, with whom is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning,’—‘ the same yes- 
terday, to-day, and forever.” This scriptural and rational 
teaching will explain the following marked features of this 
volume: 

(a) Its rejection of the common belief that there is an 
exclusive Revelation, a chosen line of Prophets, a deposit 
of Truth, a Faith once for all delivered to the Saints, a 
favorite People of God, or a one and only True Church. 

(6) Its rejection of the common belief that the Seers of 
the Jewish and Christian religions saw different Truth from 
that which the Seers of other religions had seen—though 
doubtless they saw wider, and deeper, and higher, on account 
of that enlargement of vision which resulted from cleaner 
hearts and clearer minds. 

(c) Its rejection of the common belief that absolutely new 
Truth is found in the Bible; and its constant affirmation 
that, so far as they go, all Religions reveal the same Eternal 
Truth. 

(dz) Its strong affirmation that “sacred” Scriptures are 
modern as well as ancient; that the ‘“‘canon” of Divine 
Revelations has but just reached its Alpha Volume; that 
there are Seers to-day (or ought to be) as many and as great 
as ever were “raised up” in all the Past—nay, more and 
greater they ought to be: that Inspiration includes everything 
that is “pure, and beautiful, and good”; that all “holy” 
men (and women) are “inspired of God,” and that the Old 
Testament Prophecy has, as yet, only just begun to be ful- 


xii PREFATORY NOTES. 

filled—* It shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I 
will pour out of my Spirit «pon all flesh ; and your sons and 
your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall 
see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; and on 
all my servants and on a// my handmaidens I will pour out 
in those days of my Spirit ; and they shall prophesy.” Such 
is the promised and ever-ready-to-be-conferred-Enlargement 
of Vision to all Mankind; so that all may be Seers 
whenever they fulfil the essential conditions—c/ean hearts, 
and clear minds. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart and mzind,’—then shalt thou too become one 
of God’s Prophets, as well as one of His Saints and Sons. 


“ But when we in our victousness grow hard, 
O misery on’t! the wise gods seal our eyes 
CoN eave eon Pernt: A | Make us 
Adore our errors, laugh at us while we strut 
Lo our confusion.” 


“TheLlord . . . hathclosed youreyes . . . andthe 
vision of all ts become unto you as the words of a book that 
2s sealed,” 

“Their eyes have they closed . . . but blessed are your 
eyes, for they see.” 

Blessed are those that are doth pure in heart and clear in 
mind for they do see God. 


What is true of seers or prophets in religion is equally true in every other 
department of human advancement. ‘‘ The same idea, or invention, or dis- 
covery, has come about in many parts of the world at the same time, Strange 
views break out all over the globe by apparent spontaneity. Hardly ever is an 
important discovery made by one man alone. The correlation of force was 
simultaneously announced in three countries. The discovery of Neptune was 
announced by a Frenchman coincident with its determination by an English- 
man. Chloroform was discovered on the same day by two men independently. 
Darwin and Wallace and Haeckel, without intercommunication, propounded 
simultaneously the hypothesis of evolution. It is as when mountain tops of 
equal height catch the morning sunbeam at the same moment. When races or 
individuals reach an equal height they touch the same ideas. Egyptians, 
Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians, all independently discovered the making of 
bronze. The Chinese, the Mayas, and the Germans invented the printing- 
press. Confucius, Zoroaster, and Jesus independently promulgated the golden 
rule.” (‘‘ Our Heredity from God,”) 


PREFATORY NOTES. X11 


4. In this volume (except in the introductory pages, and 
pages 19-22) no mames of authors cited or quoted from are 
given. All citations and extracts are indicated by the usual 
quotation marks. The special reason for this is that no 
citations have been made or extracts included but such as are 
axiomatic or self-evident—to all who combine the three 
attainments of moral purity, intellectual honesty, and ux- 
selfish love of truth. For none others than those who have 
attained (or are hungering and thirsting to attain) these, is 
this volume designed. General reasons for this omission of 
names may be found in Section XXXV., page 53, “ All Sacred 
Scriptures are Anonymous,” and in Section XXXVI, page 
34, “ Hiding Self behind Truth.” 

5. An unusual number of italicized words, of words begin- 
ning with a capital letter, as also an unusual number of 
general marks of punctuation have been designedly used. 
throughout the volume. The author has thus tried to make 
clear his meaning in passages that otherwise would (almost 
certainly) be wrongly understood, and unfairly represented 
by any sectarian or otherwise prejudiced person who might 
take the trouble to read or to glance through the pages. 
The mechanism of a book is of far less account than its 
meaning; and to be understood (especially in controverted 
or debatable statements) is of far greater importance than to 
follow approved methods of punctuating sentences or of 
printing words. . 

6. Sharp phrases and ofttimes seemingly severe (especially 
in the sections entitled Degeneration of Christianity, Tend- 
ency to Revert in Protestantism, Mercenary Conformity, 
Double-tongued Esotericism, and Hireling-Priests) will be 
found, and by some will be objected to. The author has 
been conscience-compelled in the use and retention of these. 
Many times did he propose to strike them out or to modify 
them. But, convinced that they were truths, and truths 
that needed to be spoken; convinced that it was only cow- 
ardice or fear of being criticised that suggested their omis- 
sion or their smoothing down, at last the resolve was fixed to 
retain them, and to retain them unchanged. Every sharp 


XiV PREFATORY NOTES. 


word and every severe rebuke, as well as every dissenting or 
(seemingly) heretical opinion expressed in this volume has 
been many times re-considered; and written and re-written 
“with all humility of mind and with many tears.” 


‘* Then answered one of the lawyers (Doctors of Divinity) and said unto him, 
Master, thus saying thou reproachest us also. And he said, Woe unto you also 
ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne. . . . Woe 
unto you ! for you build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed 
them. . . . Woeunto you! for ye have had taken away the key of knowl- 
edge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindred.” 

‘“You wish pleasanter words . . . and very likely consider my prefer- 
ence for such f/aim words a perverse sort of apartialityon my part . . . you 
wish I had not thrust them so butt-foremost at you,—you wish to use milder 
terms. Well, I admit there may be just a dash of perversity in their choice. 
The spectacle of the mere word-grabbing game played by the soft-determinists 
has perhaps driven me too violently the other way; . . . Thequestion is of 
things, not of exlogistic names for them; and the best word is the one that 
enables men to know the quickest whether they disagree or not about the 
things. . . . Any other words permit of guiddling and let us, after the 
fashion of the soft-determinists, make a pretence of restoring the caged bird to 
liberty with one hand, while with the other we anxiously tie a string to its leg 
to make sure it does not get beyond our sight.’’—[ Prof. JAMES in ‘‘ The Will to 
Believe.” | 


‘“’'T is an unweeded garden 
That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature 
Possess it chiefly.” 


** The time is out of joint ; O cursed spite 
That ever I was born to set it right.” 
(O blessed privilege that I may help to set it right.) 


‘‘ Though all can never be wrong—the existence of even one faithful soul to 
recognize wrong, or to protest against it, means that something, at least, is 
right—yet there is always something wrong somewhere, which each of us was 
probably born to help set right. . . . When we examine it, moreover, we 
shall probably find that it is not something wholly new which we are required 
to do, but something in the line of what has been already done ; developing and 
extending to a new case a principle already recognized.” 

‘* Divine Fatherhood and Human Brotherhood constitute the Religion of 
Jesus. This simple character Christianity retained for two centuries. Then 
the union of the Church with the State, its corruption by heathenism and its as- 
sumption of temporal power remanded the simple teachings of Jesus to the 
background and gave supernaturalism the control of Christianity for centuries. 
There have always been individuals and sects to keep alive in the Church the 


PREFATORY NOTES. XV 


Be 


sacred flame of pure religion ; but the recovery of the primitive traditions, and 
the extensive reorganization of Christian doctrine in line with the simple teach- 
ings of Jesus must be the achievement of the twentieth and succeeding centur- 
ies. It is now high time to cut loose from sickly supernaturalism and lay all 
stress on the two great wholesome doctrines of Jesus—the Fatherhood of God 
and the Brotherhood of Man.” 


7, A word of apology may be added for the inclusion of 
so many citations, especially in the latter pages of the 
volume. 

This has been done for a double reason :—the desire to 
present every essential aspect of the new interpretations of 
Christianity, and also to bring forward as many “ witnesses he 
to these new interpretations as the reasonable limits of the 
volume would admit of. “Ye are my witnesses, saith the 
Lord.” If “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every 
word shall be established,’ how much more profound the 
conviction when “we are compassed about with so great a 
cloud of witnesses’’—comprising so large a proportion of 
the most scholarly, devout, and pure-hearted men and 
women of all the ages; but of this introductory age of the 
twentieth century in particular. 

8. As Virgil sang, and John the Baptist cried, and Jesus 
the Meésiah prayed, and Paul the Apostle preached, and 
John the Revelator prophesied in the first century, so at the 
approach of the twentieth century should all Poets sing, and 
all Reformers cry, and all Messiahs pray, and all Apostles 
preach, and all Revelators prophesy : 

“ The new era of Cum@an Song is now arrived, 

The great Series of Ages begins anew.” 

“ The Kingdom of Heaven ts at hand, Prepare ye the way 
of the Lord, make His path straight.” 

“ That they also may be One in us; I in them and Thou in 
me, that they may be made perfect in One.” 

“ The times of this ignorance God winked at ; but now com- 
mandeth all men, everywhere, to repent.” 

“ The former things are passed away: and he that sat upon 
the throne said, Behold I make all things new.” 


Xvi PREFATORY NOTES. 


g. With these prefatory notes carefully read and well un- 
derstood, the elaborations of them in the following pages 
will be readily comprehended—however much they may be 
criticised or condemned. 

If the sharp words which may be found in this volume, 
like the sharp teeth of the mouse in the fable, shall be able 
to gnaw even one of the strings of that vast net-work of 
Superstition which, for sixteen centuries, has been binding 
down the lion-strength of primitive Christianity, the author 
will be amply rewarded for his toil. 


EXPLANATORY NOTES. 
THE PASTORAL LETTER OF 1894. 


Among various recent fendencies to revert from the “ glorious 
liberty of the children of God” to the “yokes of bondage” im- 
posed by systems and sects, is that signified by the widely known 
and much debated “ Pastoral Letter of 1894.” 

Till then it was unheard of and undreamed of that the 
“Broad” school, or the “ High” school, or any other school in 
the Protestant Episcopal Church of America should be subject 
to the direction of the Bishops as to honest interpretations of the 
New Testament, much less of the creeds and traditions of Historic 
Christianity. The Author entered this communion and ministry 
as a pronounced Broad Churchman. As such he was welcomed, 
confirmed, received, ordained, and nominated to his first Rector- 
ship by the cordial and always gracious Bishop of New York. 
He came sincerely believing that the Episcopal Church, more 
than any other of the various “ orthodox ” Churches, was open 
to new light; and as such, offered the best common ground for 
that reconstruction of old Dogmas and reuniting of all who 
called themselves Christians into one truly Catholic Communion 
which was, as it still is, his chief prayer and hope. With this 
prayer and in this hope he has quietly labored in the Episcopal 
Ministry, with rarely a week or a Sunday of rest, during all these 
years till now. His first keen disappointment came with the 
issue of the Pastoral Letter of 1894. This seemed to be an 
open condemnation of all Broad Churchmen. Though pro- 
nounced by one of the Bishops, the Bishop of New York, as hav- 
ing “ undoubtedly no conciliar authority ” and “little more value 
than is expressed in the more or less close consensus of opinion 
of some half-dozen individuals” (Letter to the New York 777b- 
une, February 15, 1895), it was reaffirmed by the House of 
Bishops at their last General Convention ; and, in spite of the 
non-concurrence of the House of Deputies, has increasingly 
been accepted as the law of Dogmatic Interpretation to which 
all clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church are bound to con- 
form. Constant and unmistakable evidences of this reaction 
toward Dogmatism very painfully came to the Author’s notice ; 
and he was driven to the conviction that the hitherto progressive 
Protestant Episcopal Church had turned its face steadfastly 
backward. 


xvii 


XVili EXPLANATORY NOTES. 


For one he could not consent to go backward with it ; neither 
could he, by keeping silence, even seem to stand with it in what 
appeared to be spiritual as well as intellectual reversion and de- 
generation. 

Therefore, as an open protest against this and all similar 
“tendencies to revert and degenerate,” and also as a hoped-for 
contribution (however slight) to the renascence or revival of 
New Testament and Apostolic Christianity, this volume was con- 
ceived and has been completed. 


(1) An Example for All Official Bodies of the Church Catholic. 


On page 254 was noticed a recent example, nobly illustrative 
of what the Bishop of New York, as quoted on one of the open- 
ing pages, earnestly commends and calls for—the courage of one’s 
convictions. 

At the date of this writing appears in all the public journals, 
with general approval, the reponsive official action of the Cor- 
poration (referred to on page 254), practically withdrawing its 
censures, and granting entire liberty of thought and speech. The 
following extracts from the Resolutions may well be presented as 
a “text” for all official bodies of the Church Catholic : 


‘“Tt was not in our minds to prescribe the path in which you should tread, or 
to restrain your freedom of opinion or reasonable liberty of utterance. In this 
liberal and catholic institution all members shall enjoy full, free, absolute, and 
uninterrupted liberty of conscience, which includes freedom of thought and ex- 
pression,” 


(2) The Lambeth Conference of 1897. 


That which follows is from the Encyclical Letter just issued by 
the Lambeth Conference of 1897, composed of the bishops of 
the whole Anglican Communion : 


‘‘ That faith is already in serious danger which refuses to face questions that 
may be raised on the authority or the genuineness of any part of the Scriptures ” 
(or of the Traditions, Formularies, or Creeds) ‘‘ that have come down to us, 

A faith which is always, or often, attended by a secret fear that we 
dare not inquire, lest inquiry should lead us to results inconsistent with what 
we believe, is already infected with a disease which may soon destroy it.” 


CONGENT]S: 


SECTION TOPIC 
I.—New TESTAMENT SANCTIONS 
MISSION OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
METHOD OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION 
PLEA AND PRAYER FOR RELIGIOUS UNITY . 
II.—PoeETIC SUGGESTIONS 4 y 4 
III.—MopERN SANCTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 
IV.—THE RENASCENCE . : : : 
“BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW ”’ . : 
V.—STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE—SURVIVAL OF THE 
FITTEST : : : ‘ : : : 
VI.—TENDENCY TO REVERT IS THE SUPREME DAN- 
GER. j : 2 : : 
VII.—DEGENERACY UNIVERSAL IN RELIGION 
VIII.— DEGENERACY—CHRISTIANITY NO EXCEPTION, 
Six GENERAL ILLUSTRATIONS FROM His- 
TORY : s : q : : : 
THE TWELVE DISCIPLES 
THE EXPERIENCE OF ST. PAUL p : 
STATEMENTS OF THE BOOK OF REVELATION, 
THE FIRST CENTURIES . 
ALL THE CENTURIES . . : ; : 
TO-DAY 5 : ; : , : 
1X.—THE SIMPLE TRUTH AS IT WAS IN JESUS 
X.—Back TO FIRST PRINCIPLES : 
XI.—THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
XIL—WHAT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT? . 
XIII.—Tue RENASCENT BIBLE 
XIV.—THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE . J ; ; 


Xix 


Nh Ww 


mq 
oowonrunrnnowo womnrnoonn 


xx CONTENTS. 


SECTION TOPIC 
XV.—How Mytus Grow : = : ; 
XVI.—THE WHEAT GARNERED—THE CHa BURNED, 
XVII.—Ec.ecticism, INCLUSIVENESS, CATHOLICISM, 
CHRISTIANITY. ; 4 : : 
THREE ANALOGOUS CONVERSATIONS ., ; 
THE MORAL, AS DRAWN FROM THE NEW 
TESTAMENT. : : ; ; 
THE MORAL, AS DRAWN FROM OTHER AN- 
CIENT SACRED BOOKS OF THE WORLD 
CONCLUSION ; : 
XVIII.—CuRISTIANITY IS Remeron Roveereee 
XIX.—JEsuS NO SECTARIAN—HIs RELIGION NO SECT 
XX.—STUDY OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION LEADS TO 
CHRISTIANITY ; : : 
XXI.—CHRISTIANITY A VAST Gaueee ae OF 
RELIGION . ; : P 
XXII.—PrRoOvE ALL, HoLp ae THE Gaon : . 
XXITI.—TuHE RELIABLE CREED AND ITs ESSENTIAL 
TESTS 7 : : = 
XXIV.—THE Livinc CREED AND PLEDGE 
THE LIFE CREED . : : : 
THE LIFE PLEDGE z : 
XXV.—CHRISTIANITY THE SUPREME RETIN 
XXVI.—THE WorLpD’s PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS 
XXVII.—THE AGE OF COMPARISON AND ITS TEST 
XXVIII.—RELIGIONS JUDGED BY THEIR FRUITS 
XXIX.—UNPREJUDICED TESTIMONIES . 
XXX.—THE VERDICT IS FOR CHRISTIANITY 
XXXI.—NOTWITHSTANDING q ; 
XX XII.—WuHaT, THEN, IS epee rat eet : ; ; 
OORT oh enan SCRIPTURES OF THE WORLD, MODERN 
AS WELL AS ANCIENT 
XXXIV.—MOopDERN SACRED SCRIPTURES ; 
XXXV.—ALL SACRED SCRIPTURES ARE ANONYMOUS 
XXXVI.—Hupinc SELF BEHIND TRUTH 
XXXVII.—THE RESURRECTED JESUS ; ; . 
XXXVIII.—New MEANING or OLp DocMAS AND Crnene 
XXXIX.—QUEsTIONS OF CRITICISM AND THEIR AN- 
SWERS 


PAGE 


ak 
24 


27 
27 


28 


A. 
30 
30 
32 


32 


34 
34 


CONT LAV S,; 


a 


SECTION 


TOPIC 
THE CHARGE OF ‘‘ HERESY ”’ ? f 


REVIVING ANCIENT HERESIES? . ; 
NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES, NEW CLOTH ON 
OLD GARMENTS? : : 
INCONSISTENT—A SORT OF HYPOCRITE? 
WHY NOT WAIT FOR COUNCILS, CONVEN- 
TIONS, OR AUTHORIZED COMMITTEES? . 
THE “TRINITY,” “NICENE CREED,” ETC., 
WHY CONTINUE TO USE THEM? . 


XL.—ATTEMPT AT REASONABLE EXPLANATION 


I. THE TRINITY : 4 ; 

2. CHRIST . : 

3. JESUS CHRIST 

JESUS THE CHRIST 

CHRISTIANS 

SALVATION BY CHRIST 

JESUS CHRIST AS THE SAVIOUR 

SON OF GOD 

JESUS CHRIST THE SON OF GOD ; 

JESUS CHRIST THE ONLY SON OF GOD 

CONCEIVED OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, BORN 

OF THE VIRGIN MARY : 

12. THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF JESUS 

13. BEFORE ALL WORLDS,—BY WHOM ALL 
THINGS WERE MADE . : : 

14. GOD OF GOD, LIGHT OF LIGHT, VERY GOD 
OF VERY GOD : BEGOTTEN, NOT MADE, 

I5. ONE CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH, 

16, THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD . : 

17. THE HOLY SACRAMENTS OF BAPTISM AND 
THE LORD’S SUPPER . 

18. THE HOLY GHOST . ; 

19. RECEIVING THE HOLY GHOST : 

20, ROSE FROM THE DEAD AND ASCENDED 
TO HEAVEN ; 

21. HEAVEN AND HELL 

22. SHALL COME AGAIN TO JUDGE THE 
WORLD, WHOSE KINGDOM SHALL HAVE 
NOEND . ’ : ; * 


re 


eg Oe aS bea 


on Do 


71 


XXi1 CONTENTS. 
ER NERA it ta Eee Dae NL SR OE 


SECTION LOPIC PAGE 
X LI.—STILL OPEN TO NEw LIGHT : : : 1) 

XLII—DEeEGENERATION OF PROTESTANTISM—PERSIST- 
ENT TENDENCIES TO REVERT : ee 


XLIII.—TuHeE PRorestant REFORMATION ONLY THE BE- 
GINNING OF NEEDED AND ESSENTIAL RE- 


FORMS . : : , ! 2 ae 
XLIV.—“THouGH ALL MEN sHOULD ForsakE THEE, 
YET WILL NoT [” : : : 3 ei 
XLV.—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY A REVIVAL OF Com- 
BINED PIETY AND MORALITY : me, 
(a) PIETY AND MORALITY COMBINED WAS CHRIS- 
TIANITY AS TAUGHT BY JESUS : eee 
(b) THE TWO EXTREMES , : ae 
(c) RELIGIOUS CEREMONIALISM AND ETHICAL 
PROPRIETIES . ‘ ; ; : iL 
(d) PARTIAL TRUTHS ACCEPTED AS THE WHOLE 
TRUTH, : } ; ; : . Appa 
(e) ROME OR REASON . ; : 2 : ae 
(f) THE GOLDEN MEAN. : oe 
(g) JESUS THE GREAT UNITER AS WELL AS 
REFORMER : : é' ' Rape is 
(h) THE OLD STORY OF TENDENCY TO REVERT . 86 
(i) BUILDING ON THE SIDE OF ROME, OR OF 
REASON, OR ON THE “ ROCK”? BETWEEN . 87 


XLVI.—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY A RE-ADJUSTMENT 
OF THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EMPLOYERS 
AND THOSE EMPLOYED, OR BETWEEN 


CAPITAL AND LABOR . A ; : BN The «37, 
(a) THE RE-ADJUSTMENT STATED, : eee 
(b) HOW THE CHRISTIAN EMPLOVEE SHOULD BE- 
HAVE TOWARD HIS EMPLOYER . : a ae 
(c) PEACEABLE AND PATIENT CONTENT WITH 
ONE’S LOT : , ; : : ; Og 
(d) “VENGEANCE IS MINE ; I WILL REPAY, 
SAITH THE LORDYV¥ | : ; celta 


(e) BURNING SUB-QUESTIONS—INDOLENCE, PAU- 
PER-SPIRITED PRIDE, IGNORANCE, VICE, 
VIOLENCE : ie noe 

(f) SPECIAL REFORMS FAVORABLE TO THE 


CONTENTS. 


Soxiit 
SECTION TOPIC PAGE 
WORKING CLASSES WHICH RENASCENT 
CHRISTIANITY WILL INSIST UPON—LOW- 
EST PRICES FOR ALL NEEDFUL COMMODI- 
TIES, EXTREMES OF WEALTH AND POVER- 
TY RESTRAINED, SYNDICATES AND OTHER 
MONOPOLIES PUT DOWN, BUREAUS OF IN- 
DUSTRY, GOVERNMENT SAVINGS BANKS, 
SAME PAY FOR THE WORKING WOMAN AS 
FOR THE WORKING MAN 95 
XLVII—“ First PurE, THEN PEACEABLE ” 100 
(a) PURITY BEFORE PEACE . ; IoL 
(b) A TRUTH POSTULATED, A PROBLEM STATED, 
A THEOREM ENUNCIATED 4 i 5 Moe 
(c) THE CAUSES OF FAILURES AND SUFFERINGS . 106 
(d) THE SWORD . ; : 108 
(e) MUCH TO BE DONE—ADVANCEMENT WILL 
BE SLOW . : : : ; : Keke) 
XLVIII.—HINDRANCES IIT 
I. MERCENARY CONFORMITY 112 
2, INSINCERITY . 116 
3. DOUBLE-TONGUED ESOTERICISM 117 
4. HIRELING PRIESTS . : : RL LomLLO 
5. CONSERVATISM OF INBORN STUPIDITY . 124 
XLIX.—PREFATORY EXPLANATIONS AND TopicaL Con- 
TENTS OF THE NEW EDITION OF ANCIENT 
SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE WORLD 129 
L.—A MopERN PROPHET-PRIEST—SKETCHED AS A 
MODEL F : LO 
LI.—OurR RECENT Seren en eemicrerancns SE- 
LECTED FROM HIS SERMONS : era 
LII.—A MopEern PROPHET-BARD—APPROPRIATE SE- 
LECTIONS : j ely 
LIII.—REVERSIONS AND ee NT eONS WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO JESUS-WoRSHIP AND MARIOLA- 
Rae A ; } ; 5 153 
CORRECTING QUOTATIONS 154 


LIV.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REF- 
ERENCE TO CONCEPTIONS OF THE Hoty 
GHOST 


157 


XXIV CONTENTS. 


SECTION TOPIC 
CORRECTING QUOTATIONS i ) 
LV.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO CONCEPTIONS OF THE ATONING 
SACRIFICE . : . , : : : 
CORRECTING QUOTATIONS . A : : 
LVI.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO ARCHITECTURE AND ADORN- 
MENTS AS CONSTITUTING A CHURCH . 
LVII.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO RITUALISTIC OR OTHER SENSA- 
TIONAL OR “ POPULARIZED” FORMS OF 
WORSHIP 
CORRECTING QUOTATIONS A : 
LVIII.—Mopern CONFIRMATIONS—A FEW OUT OF 
MANY ‘ 5 4 P : 
LIX.—ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS FROM RECENT Books 
BEARING ON THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF 
THS*DIBLES. : . ; - 
I. THE INFALLIBLE BOOK . : ; 
2. IDEAS AND FORMS COMMON TO ALL RE- 
LIGIONS ., ; 3 ? : 
3. FALSE AND FANCIFUL INTERPRETA- 
TIONS : : 
4. INFALLIBLE BIBLES MUST BE INFAL- 
LIBLY PRESERVED ., : ‘ : 
5. THE TRANSLATORS MUST BE _ INFAL- 
LIBLE 3 : : : ; 
6. MIRACULOUS INSPIRATION NO LONGER 
CREDIBLE. ks " : : , 
7. HIGHER CRITICISM RESCUES AND EX- 
ALTS THE BIBLE : : ; ; 
8. IMMORAL INFLUENCE OF THE OLD 
IDEAS OF THE BIBLE, ESPECIALLY 
UPON THE YOUNG : : 
9. THE ESSENTIAL TRUTHS OF THE BIBLE 
ARE, OF THEMSELVES, SELF-EVIDENT, 
IO. WHO ARE THE ENEMIES OF THE BIBLE? 
II, HOW TO VIEW AND USE THE BIBLE 
12. HOW THE BIBLE WAS FORMED 


PAGE 


161 


CONTENTS. 


SECTION TOPIC 
13. THE BIBLE CANON ALWAYS AN OPEN 
QUESTION . 
14. THE LONG PERIOD OF THE BIBLE’S 
GROWTH . ; : : : 


I5, DATE OF THE BIRTH OF JESUS 
16. THE STORY OF THE MIRACULOUS BIRTH, 
17, THE MESSIANIC HOPE 
18, JESUS THE MESSIAH 
19. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HE- 
BREWS 4 é : , ; 
20, THE NEW TESTAMENT MIRACLES . 
21. OUR SYNOPTIC GOSPELS. : 3 
22. THE FOURTH GOSPEL . / : Z 
23. ST. PAUL’S CONCEPTION OF JESUS . 
24. THE CORPOREAL RESURRECTION AND 
ASCENSION ; : : : : 
25, A PARABLE OF THE LIFE OF JESUS 
LX.—MISCELLANEOUS CONFIRMATIONS — EXTRACTS 
FROM RECENT Books . : s ? , 
LXI.—EmMpPIRICISM AND EVOLUTIONISM VERSUS INSTI- 
TUTIONALISM AND CREATIONALISM . : 
LXII.— TENDENCIES TO REVERT AND TO DEGENERATE 
HisTORICALLY CONFIRMED a Pare : 
TXII1—TuHe Present DEGENERATION OF OUR 
CHURCHES . ; , , : ; : 
LXIV.—TRUE TO ONE’S OWN SELF 
LXV.—A. RIGHTEOUS DISREGARD OF Boeri Onno 
LXVI—THE GOLDEN MEAN OF CONTROVERSY . : 
LXVII.—FRAGMENTS : 
I. RISINGS AND FALLINGS OF MAN . : 
2, JESUS THE FRUITAGE OF THE AGES . 
3. EXTERNAL PROSPERITY AND INTERNAL 
DECAY ’ . ; : 
4. WHAT MANKIND MOST NEEDS , 
5. ANSWERING OUR OWN PRAYERS . 
LXVIIL—Tue SPIRIT AND NOT THE LETTER OF THE 


CREEDS ; : } 
LXIX.—MopERN USE OF ANCIENT Tee AND TERMS . 


186 


188 


190 
191 


192 
194. 


195 


203 


208 


211 
215 
217 
219 


221 
224 


225 
227 
228 


229 
230 


XXvi CONTENTS. 


SECTION TOPIC 
LXX,—IDEAS AND TERMS FURNISHED BY EVOLUTION- 
ARY SCIENCE TO RENASCENT CHRISTIANILY 
LXXI.—THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND ITS WORSHIP 
IN THE FIRST CENTURY : : ; 
(a) PRAYER IN THE CHURCH DOWN TO THE 
MIDDLE OF THE THIRD CENTURY 
LXXII.—CHRISTOLOGY IN THE CHURCH DOWN TO THE 
CLOSE OF THE THIRD CENTURY : ; 
LXXIII.—DEGENERATION IN THE CHURCH—HOW IT 
PROCEEDED AND PROCEEDS : ; 
LXXIV.—DEGENERATION OF THE APOSTOLIC MINISTRY 
INTO COMMERCIALISM—AS FOUND AT THE 
CLOSE OF THE I9TH CENTURY . 
LXXV.—SERMONS MADE TO ORDER : : ; 
LXXVI.—TRADITIONALISM AS A MaIn CAusE OF DE- 
GENERATION ; ; ; : ; 
LXXVII.—CREDULITY AND Romg, or FAITH AND REA- 
SON—WHICH ? i : ‘ : ; 
LXXVIITI.—Evo.LuTion oF THE TRIAD AS AN EXPLANA- 
TION OF GOD ? . : : : : 
(a2) DIVINE PERSONALITY. . : : : 
LXXIX.—A Main REASON WHY SO MANY DISBELIEVE 
IN GOD AND IN IMMORTALITY ! 
LXXX.—TuHE ECLECTICISM OF CHRISTIANITY—ILLUS- 
TRATIONS. ; ; : ; : 7 
LXXXI—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY AND SACRED 
SCRIPTURES . : , 
(a) EXPLANATORY NOTE. ; . . 
(6) MOTIVES : : 
(c) THE “RETROGRADE MOVEMENT” , 


PAGE 
234 
238 
240 
241 
246 
250 
254 
257 
260 


263 
265 


266 


269 


275 


275 
276 


(7) SPECIAL EXPLANATIONS AS TO TRANSLATIONS 


OF THE BIBLE , ‘ : 
(ec) THE “RECEIVED TEXT” 
(f) THE POLYCHROME EDITION 
(g) CONFIRMING CITATIONS 
(i) HOW THE ECLECTICISM OF CHRISTIANITY 
RENDERS IT A WORLD-RELIGION 
(¢) A PARABLE OF CHRISTIANITY AS THE 
RELIGION OF ECLECTICISM 


278 
285 
288 
290 


292 


294 


CONTENTS. 


SECTION TOPIC 
LXXXII.—MystTery oF THE DIVINE IN THE HuMAN— 
oR, Jesus THE CuRIsT As “GoD MANIFEST 
IN THE FLESH” . : : ° 
LX XXIII.—‘“ FILLED WITH ALL THE EeUNECe OF Conn 
AS THE PRIVILEGE OF EvEeRY MAN . : 
LXXXIV.—ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS FROM MANY RE- 
CENT AUTHORS . . ; : 
(az) OPTIMISTIC FOREGLEAMS 
(4) COURAGE AND HOPE . : 
LXXXV.— ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 
I. SUCCESS AND FAILURE . : : : 
2, FICTION AND FACT 
3. A MOST ANCIENT STATEMENT OF THE 
DOCTRINE ON THE TRINITY . 
4. HOW IGNORANCE EVER MISCONCEIVES 
THE CHARACTER OF GOD . : 
5. AS IN RELIGION SO IN EDUCATION, COM- 
MERCIALISM PREVAILS , ; 

_ SENSATIONALISM IN THE CHURCHES . 

MITAPAYSa: ; , : : : . 

COMMERCIAL BRIGANDS. : : ; 

_ PUNISHMENT MEANS PURIFICATION AND 

REFORM ; : : : : 

10. GOLDEN ERAS IN RELIGION NO EVIDENCE 
OF SUPERNATURALISM OR OF PERMA- 
NENTLY SUPERIOR WORTH 3 ; 

II. CHURCHES AS SPIRITUAL HOSPITALS AND 
MORAL REFORMATORIES  . : : 

12. INSINCERITY THE ONLY UNPARDONABLE 
SINaae 

13. BONDAGE TO TRADITIONS . : 

14. TRUE RELIGION IS CATHOLIC, AND AS 
SUCH INCLUSIVE. : : i ; 

I5. TENDENCIES TO POMP, LUXURY, AND 
WEALTH AMONG THOSE WHO ARE 
CALLED MINISTERS OF CHRIST . 

16. THE RESULTS OF PARTISANSHIP IN RE- 
LIGION AS SEEN IN OUR MISSIONS AND 
CHURCHES THE WORLD OVER . : 


0 oN D 


Bat 
225 
323 
324 
325 
326 


327 


ae) 
Se 
Soe 
333 
335 


336 


338 


XXVill 


CONTENTS. 


SECTION 


TOPIC 


LXXXV—IxLuLustrraTIvE NotEes—(Continued.) 


17. 


18. 
19. 


20. 


21, 
es 
23. 
24. 
By 


20s 


27. 


1, EXPLANATIONS TO READERS . ' : ; 
2. TO THE 20TH CENTURY—AN OPEN Ren, 3 : 
3. TO ALL WHO SEEK THE CHRIST ; : 
4. THE RAPID AND BANEFUL GROWTH OF cee ate 


WHAT THEN IS THE REMEDY, AND 
WHERE? . : : é 7 : 

SECTARIANISM AND CATHOLICITY 

DECAY IN ALL RELIGIONS AND THEIR 
CONSTANT NEED OF REFORM 

THE CRITICAL FACULTY AND ITS BENEVO- 
LENT USE 

MERCENARY MOTIVES 

MELIORATION AND MELIORATORS 

ANOTHER VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS . 

““ON, HONOR, HONEST”. ; 

GRADUAL EXTENSION OF “THE REAL 

PRESENCE” AS A DOCTRINE OF THE 

CHURCH On, ; 3 

THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND 

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH” ., 

FKEE CHURCHES AND THE GOSPEL 
WITHOUT EPRICE amen ; ; : 

THE “ESTABLISHED ORDER” AND THE 
“ PROTESTANTS : 


. SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. . : 
. THE RULING MOTIVE . . : 
. BELIEFS, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL . 


“REPENT YE” : i : : b 
CLOSING CONFIRMATIONS ' . - 


ADDENDA. 


“ Lord God of Hosts be with us yet, 
Lest we forget—lest we forget.” 


PAGE 


339 
341 


342 


344 
344 
345 
347 
352 


352 
303 
355 


358 
359 
366 
369 
371 
373 


383 
386 
391 
392 


INTRODUCTORY QUOTATIONS. 


I—NEW TESTAMENT SANCTIONS. 


(a.) Mission of the Higher Criticism. 
| Pees ye ; for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. 


The voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
Make ye ready the way of the Lord, 
Make his paths straight.” 


“From this time began Jesus to preach, and to say, Re- 
pent ye; for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” 

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on the Earth as 
in Heaven.” 


(b.) Method of Comparative Religion. 


“ Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth 
not on me, but on Him that sent me.” “ For I have not 
spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave 
me commandment what I should say, and what I should 
speak.” “If any man hear my words and believe not, I 
judge him not: for I am not come to judge the world, but 
to save the world.” 

“Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right.” 

“ Whosoever doeth the will of my Father, who is in 
Heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and my 
mother.” 


XXix 


XXX RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


(c.) Plea and Prayer for Religious Unity. 


‘“And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them 
also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there 
shall be one fold and one shepherd.” 

“Holy Father, keep them whom Thou hast given me in 
Thy name, that they may be one even as we are. Sanctify 
them in the truth; Thy word is truth. Neither for these 
only do I pray, but for them also that shall believe on me 
through their word, that they all may be one, even as Thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one 
in us—I in them and Thou in me, that they may be per- 

ected into one.” 


II.— POETIC SUGGESTIONS. 


“If some new phase of truth thy toil discover— 
Thine inmost eye with some bright vision blest— 
Conceal it not, proclaim it as a lover 
His love proclaims. Awhile, thine honored guest— 
Thy new-found thought—secret perchance may hover 
Near Thee alone! But there it must not rest.” 
—SiIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, 


“What if cherished Creeds must fade? 
Faith will never leave us; 
God preserves what God has made, 
Nor can Truth deceive us. 
Let in light—the Holy Light! 
Brothers, fear it never ; 
Darkness smiles and wrong grows right ; 
Let in light forever !”’ 
—WHITTIER. 


“All before us lies the way, 
Give the past unto the wind. 
All before us is the day, 
Night and darkness are behind. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. XXxXi 


Eden, with its angels bold— 
Love, and Peace, and Purity— 
Is not an ancient story told, 
But a glowing prophecy.” 
—WHITTIER. 


III.—MODERN SANCTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. 


“Tt is almost certain that the Church will soon begin the 
reconstruction of Dogma, and that men are living who will 
have share in the enterprise. The material is rapidly accu- 
mulating for the work, and the Church will soon demand 
that the results of the New Criticism and the New Exegesis 
be gathered and stated to the world. . . . This is a time 
for which many are praying. . . . It isto be hoped that 
every branch of the Christian Church will soon exact no 
other pledge of her teachers than a declaration of faith in 
Jesus as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, anda 
promise to keep His commandments; and otherwise to 
grant to them the fullest freedom of thought and expres- 
sion.’— The Rev. Fohn Watson, D.D. [tan Maclaren] zz the 
Lyman Beecher Divinity Lectures at Yale University, 1899. 


“The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man— 
that is the simple creed that has given inspiration to 
every religion that has ever struck its roots deep down in 
the human heart; and no other belief to-day is so dominant 
among the forces that are making civilizations over again. 
It marks the point of divergence from the old religions and 
social systems whose fundamental thought was, ‘God made 
man, therefore He has a right to damn him.’ ‘Not so,’ 
say those who speak for a new interpretation of the old dog- 
mas. ‘Rather let us say, God made man, therefore He 
will bless him.’ The old creed has always driven men 
apart: the new creed will draw them together.’—/rom a 
recent cdttortal of the New York Tribune. 

[The following, from a recent Sermon by Bishop Henry 
C. Potter, D.D., is as true of our religious as it is of our so- 


Stl RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


cial and political conditions—as applicable to the Church as 
it is to the State: | 

“This is a universe of order, not of chance nor of freak. 
Just because behind it there is the sovereign Source of all 
laws, therefore no mere human caprice can suspend those 
laws. Into this universe of fixed laws the Author of it has 
introduced a being with the mysterious and inestimable gift 
of moral freedom. To him has been vouchsafed not ‘only 
will, but freedom of the will. He may work, or he may 
dream. He may sow wheat or tares. But ‘whatsoever a 
man soweth, that ’—not something else—‘ shall he also reap’ 

the harvest whose seed he has sown ; not the harvest 
which he has merely wished for, or coveted, or imagined. 

As in imperial Rome, glutted with the wealth of 
her conquests, and drunk and dizzy with the infamy of her 
vices, there has risen, with much material prosperity, the 
loathsome spectacle of manhood without virtue, of woman- 
hood without shame, of a people glorying in its degradation, 
and rotten to the very core. Harvests, plenty, wealth: what 
are they but the possible instruments of an unutterable degra- 
dation, save as they are held as a stewardship for highest ends, 
and used as agencies for man’s service and God’s honor? 

This may seem a harsh statement, but its substantial 
accuracy is very easily tested. . . . For what, in one word, 
isour condition? J maintain—and I challenge contradiction 
of that statement—that it is one in which independent action 
has largely perished. Largely, but not wholly, thank God! 
The other day on the floor of Congress a member who had 
convictions gave expression to them, and announced his in- 
tention of voting, whatever his party might do, in accord- 
ance with them. Said a fellow-member, as he sat down: 
‘You are right, and I agree with you. Jf J too had the 
courage of my convictions, I should do as you will do. But TI 
have not, and so, I shall not.’ 

“A poor creature, we say! A coward, without principle; 
or, at least, wath principles too weak to make him do his duty! 
Yes; but who is responsible for him? Again I say, my 
brother, youand I. . . . There are wrongs to be righted 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. XXXill 


which, because they have sometimes been exaggerated by 
rash and reckless men, cannot, nevertheless, wisely be ignored. 

Above all, there is a noisy and aggressive self-confi- 
dence which may well make us tremble. . . . Oursis a 
heritage of great ideals. It is these that we must sow inthe 
hearts of the people. . . . Let us not be slow to do it.” 


“A sturdy stock that suffered exile rather than forego the right 
of free thought and free speech. These are the people who are 
the salt of the earth. And yet as I read history I see that they 
are the people who have been hunted with dogs and followed by 
armed men carrying fagots. . . . Take from America the 
Puritans, Huguenots, Quakers and other like-minded reformers 
of Church and State, and it is no longer the land of the free or 
the home of the brave.” 


[ The following are recent words by the Rector of Ya) THA 
Episcopal Church of Albany, N.Y.|: 


“Tn every department of thought a new theory or fact is a dis- 
turbance and an affront. It intrudes upon men’s leisures, It 
breaks crystallized thought and dislocates mental habits. With 
the mass of people, a new fact, and especially a new theory, is an 
intellectual tramp who is unceremoniously turned out of doors 
with an exhortation to work for his living. This is especially true 
in regard to facts or theories which compel men to revise those 
interpretations and opinions which, while not authorized by, are 
more or less associated with the traditional religion. Zhe new 
theory or fact has, therefore, got to fight and turn out of doors the 
orthodox belief before it can take and occupy tts place.” 


“ Obviously, then, one needful part of the process of reforma- 
tion in theology which is now happily in progress, is to emanci- 
pate men’s minds from the tyranny of creedal language, and bring 
them back to the simplicity of Biblical language. This will 
greatly help to make religion more true than it has been to the 
actual facts of human life, relations, and experience. Heartily 
do we wish success to the new reformation.” 


% 


oa ‘os 


Cer Aw a 
Verdin he whine 
al ; 


as a 


La 3 } a he” ful i 
Uh —_ BS ips 


ps 
Sea 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


IV.—THE RENASCENCE. 
“ Behold, I make all things new.” 


N these days of new science, new thought, new methods, 

| new aspirations—in short, of a new universe to all who 
have widely observed and profoundly meditated—the 
above prophecy is being fulfilled as never, in historic times, 
has it been fulfilled before. With the ‘new Heavens,” which 
astronomy is creating for us, and the “new earth,” which 
evolutionary science is creating; with the new history of 
mankind which geology and archeology are unfolding, and 
the new nature of man which both physiology and psychol- 
ogy are revealing, must come, surely and quickly, new re- 
ligion, new ethics, and a new Church. In these latter depart- 
ments there is at present (and quite naturally) chaos. The 
uncertainties and the pangs of anew birth are upon us. The 
void and darkness of a new creation are before us and 
around. In all highly civilized communities of the earth 
there is to-day such a commotion of enquiry, doubt, and 
unbelief as no other epoch in the history of theologies, of 
systemized morals, or of ecclesiastical cults ever experienced 
—the first four Christian centuries not excepted. In this 
dissolving, formless, and re-creative condition of things any 
honest and reasonably intelligent attempt to purify original 
sources, to reform institutions, to reconstruct creeds, and 
to restore the ever-living Christ with his vitalizing religion to 

I 


2 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


Se ee eee SS Eee 


the world ought to be cordially welcomed. Human agen- 
cies indeed cannot re-create, but they can and must “ prepare 
the way.” Without this preparation the kingdom of God 
never has come to the world and never will. Chaos will 
continue, void and darkness will prevail “upon the face of 
the deep.” But in proportion as human agencies vigorously 
co-operate, the Divine Agency will fulfil its prophetic 
promise, “Behold I make all things new.” 


“The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 
And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. 
And God saw the light, that it was good, . . . and the 
evening and the morning were the first pertod.”’ 


V.—STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE—SURVIVAL OF THE 
FITTEST. 


“What I say unto one, I say unto all, Watch. sepelleee 
was the Divine Master’s oft-repeated injunction. In Religion 
as elsewhere, Eternal Vigilance is the price of Liberty. In 
Religion as elsewhere prevail the universal, inviolable laws 
of Struggle for Existence and Survival of the Fittest. ne 
Hebrew Scriptures everywhere symbolized these laws by 
“the shedding of blood, without which there could be no 


remission’; and the Christian Scriptures everywhere sym- 
bolize the same by the Cross, without which there can be 
no Crown. “Strait is the gate and narrow the way which 


leadeth unto Life, and few there be that find it.” Therefore 
“ struggle.” Connected with these there is another equally 
certain and equally universal law, in Religion as elsewhere :— 
Tendency to Revert, with consequent Deterioration and 
Decay. These three great laws, Struggle for Existence, 
Survival of the Fittest, and Tendency to Revert (or to De- 
generate) are fundamental in Soul, as in Mind and Body; in 
systems, theories, and practices of Religion as in everything 
else. No intelligent person any longer questions these laws 
as existent in the realms of Body and of Mind. And no 
intelligent student of the Bible, of the Sacred Writings of all 
nations, of Christianity (through its few bright and many 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 3 


dark ages till now), of the various religions of the world 
which have risen and decayed, can fail to be convinced— 
whether he be prepared to acknowledge it or not—that the 
same great laws prevail in the Soul of Man, and in all those 
institutions and products of religion through which the Soul 
of Man seeks to evolve and express itself. 


VI.—TENDENCY TO REVERT IS THE SUPREME DANGER. 


As an unquestionable fact, in Christianity as in every 
other form of religion, there has been from the first a per- 
sistent and unceasing Tendency to Revert. The tendency 
of the masses, headed and guided by priest-craft, always has 
been, still is, and doubtless always (till the Millennial Ages) 
will be, to degrade religion into superstition, to transform 
both worship and morals into pantomimic routines and into 
dramatic exhibitions. To select one example out of a mul- 
titude. The original religion of Eleusis, in ancient Greece, 
was rational, lofty, and solemn; but soon it became inter- 
woven with fables, corrupted by tradition, and controlled by 
priest-craft. To please and (as it was supposed) edify the 
masses, it was permitted to go gradually downward till we 
see it transformed at last into such spectacles as that of 
countless multitudes of devotees with eagerness and trans- 
port gathered to witness ‘Venus rising from the waves,’— 
the courtesan Phryne personating Venus by entering and 
emerging from the sea at Eleusis, while priests recited litanies 
and the breathless multitude gazed, wondered, and adored. 
“To this came at last the once sublime and elevating religion 
of Delphi and of Olympia.” So tends every religion down- 
ward—and Christianity is no exception—unless ceaselessly 
guarded by reformers and diligently purged from ever accu- 
mulating fables and corrupting superstitions. 

In ancient Greece, such men as A¢schylus and Sophocles, 
Socrates and Plato sought to reform the popular religion by 
rejecting its irrational fables, dogmas, and rituals, retaining 
only the essential truths which were beneath them. Had 
they succeeded in this attempted reform then the noble 


4 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


A NDS AP RSS ee Se eed at Rb ee es eR 5 LS 


religion of Greece—later that of Rome, and later still that of 
Christendom as well—might have been saved from degen- 
erating into senseless stories of nymphs, dryads, and demons; 
of fairies, gnomes, and hobgoblins ; of spooks, witches, and 
devils: of charms, amulets, and saving sacraments; of magic 
shrines, magic relics, and supernatural visions; of miraculous 
healings, inerrant holy books, and infallible popes ; of apos- 
tolical successions of priests, infallible edicts of official theo- 
logians; and “many other such like things ” which, in ever- 
varying forms and versions, are found in all the religions 
of the world. 

The popular religion, which is always the religion of the 
majorities, to-day as ever, here as elsewhere, strongly and 
persistently tends to revert. Only by the unsparing rejec- 
tion of its senseless fables, childish rituals, and irrational 
dogmas (retaining always the essential truths which are 
hidden beneath them)—only thus can this tendency be re- 
strained from utter deterioration and hopeless decay. 


VII.—DEGENERACY UNIVERSAL IN RELIGION. 


“ Tendency to Revert” is a law of universal application 
so far as the present earth and its various products are con- 
cerned. There are certain observations of science and also 
of history which have now settled into such unquestionable 
facts as to be self-evident. We may call them axioms. 
Among these a few may be cited as follows: 

1. All moving bodies, unless vigorously and unceasingly 
propelled, tend to become again inert and motionless. 

2. All living organisms, unless vitally sustained and re- 
newed, tend to decay and death. 

3. All domesticated plants and tamed animals, unless 
assiduously cultivated and restrained, tend to return to their 
original wildness and ferocity. 

4. All civilized communities of men, unless constantly 
incited and urged forward to a more perfect civilization, 
tend to fall back to their primitive savagery of tastes and 
habits. 


PENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 5 


5. All enlightened minds of men, unless ever moving 
upward in intellectual culture, tend to their primal stagna- 
tion and stupidity. 

6. All elevated characters of men, unless persistently 
aspiring to higher and ever higher ideals of virtue, tend to 
become grovelling and vicious again. 

These all are recognized as axioms of science and of 
history, and are confirmed by every thoughtful person’s 
observations and experience. 

To these six axioms we add a seventh : 

7, All teachings and institutions of religion, unless cease- 
lessly guarded, purified, and reformed, tend to revert to the 
corruptions and follies of grossest heathenism. 

Attempting now to apply these axioms to individual 
persons, societies, teachings, and institutions, we are almost 
invariably repelled with the reply—“ Yes, it is all unques- 
tionably true zz general. But / am an exception: my 
Country, my Society, my Doctrines, my Religion, are excep- 
tions. J could never revert to a savage condition ! my coun- 
try could never become barbarous, my institutions debased, 
my Religion heathenish again!” So exclaims the average 
American, European, Asiatic, African, Sea Islander—of 
every State and Tribe—with equal self-assurance and em- 
phasis. As to Religion in particular the average Christian, 
Jew, Mohammedan, Confucian, Buddhist, Brahman, Zoroas- 
trian—of every sect and school—with equal self-esteem and 
bigotry would exclaim, “/ am, we are, an exception!” 
Christians, like all the others, perhaps (on account of their 
prevalent conceit that they are “God's chosen people” and 
theirs “the true and only true Religion”) even more than 
the others, are disposed to make an exception of Christianity, 
and especially of their own Christian sect and selves. ihe 
average Christian is highly indignant at any comparison of 
Christianity with any of the other Religions of the world, all 
of which he contemptuously spurns as Paganism or Heathen- 
ism, between which and Christianity “there is fixed an im- 
passable gulf.” It is as much as any man’s reputation is 
worth (in some “Catholic” countries or communities as 


6 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


much as his life is worth) to venture a suggestion that Chris- 
tians are not “ God’s chosen people” in any exclusive sense. 
They forget or reject St. Peter’s affirmation, ‘“‘God is no 
respecter of persons, but in every nation he that revereth 
Him and worketh righteousness isaccepted by Him.’”’ Who 
ever yet heard a sermon preached in any reputable “ ortho- 
dox”’ Christian Church from this text—except it were to 
undervalue it and explain it away? What reputable 
“orthodox” Christian Preacher, Priest, Bishop, or Theo- 
logical Professor can to-day be found who even dares to 
openly advocate the zmpartial study of Comparative Re- 
ligion—all the Religions of the world gathered in one Parlia- 
ment—with all their Sacred Books open side by side, and all 
their representative men accorded the equal courtesy of free 
and honest speech ? 


VITI.—DEGENERACY—CHRISTIANITY NO EXCEPTION. 


So much as to the fact that the average Christian (like 
the average Jew, Mohammedan, or other bigoted Religion- 
ist of the world) strenuously asserts that 42s Religion is “an 
exception,’ both as to its Teachings, which are infallible, 
and as to its institutions, which are not subject to the law 
of Tendency to Revert. But let us pass from Christianity 
as one of the great religions of the world to Christianity as 
divided into numerous sects and schools. The average ad- 
herent of each one of these sects and schools makes this 
claim, as against all the others, that his sect or school is 
certainly “an exception.” The average Roman Catholic 
affirms this. Protestantism may indeed revert—in fact, has 
already half reverted—to Heathenism. But Roman Catholi- 
cism revert—the one and only true and infallible Church re- 
vert to Heathenism? ever / 

The average Greek Catholic affirms the same of the 
“Most Holy, Blessed, and only Orthodox Church” to 
which he belongs, as against both Roman Catholicism and 
Protestantism. The average Protestant affirms the same as 
against both Roman Catholicism and Greek Catholicism. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. tf 


Those who call themselves Anglican Catholics, or Church of 
England Protestants, or Protestant Episcopal affirm that, 
without the “ Apostolical Succession” and certain other 
essential characteristics which they claim to possess, there is 
no “true Church”; hence the average “Churchman ” will 
have no “ dealings ” with any of the other Protestant “sects” 
—counting them all as degenerate and likely to degenerate 
more and more. The same they affirm (but with much less 
severity) of the Greek and the Roman Churches; while of 
their own “Catholic and Apostolic Church” they affirm 
such a degree of infallibility as renders it impossible for 2 
ever to revert to its original Heathenism. Onthe other hand 
the average adherent of any one of the hundred or more 
Protestant sects affirms substantially the same of his own 
sect as against all the others. And finally, as we have al- 
ready suggested, all average Christians, of all the Protestant 
sects as well as of the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic, 
are united in this one respect (and in this one only) that 
they persistently believe all other religions of the world al- 
ready so degenerate as to warrant their being called False 
Religions; and so rapidly degenerating that they are, all 
alike, certain of speedy collapse and utter decay; “ but 
Christianity—zever /”’ 

Is then Christianity an exception to the otherwise univer- 
sal law of degeneration or tendency to revert? Does this 
law find no application here? Is there no danger, need 
there be no anxiety Zeve—though everywhere else there is 
alarming danger and cause for ceaseless anxiety? Let us 
glance at a few of a thousand facts of history which plainly 
show how futile and foolish is this claim that “ Christianity 
is an exception.” 

To begin with:—1. Christianity’s first and greatest apos- 
tles, the Twelve Disciples, reverted so quickly and de- 
generated so rapidly that one of them sold his Master for 
money ; all the others deserted him and fled in his time of 
sorest extremity ; while the chief one of them all, St. Peter, 
thrice lied and with profane curses and oaths, in the presence 
of Pilate, denied that he was even acquainted with the man 


8 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


whom, a few days before, he had saluted as ‘“‘ Messiah the 
Son of the Living God.” And many years later, this same 
St. Peter so reverted and degenerated again that “ for fear 
of the Jews he dissembled”’ and played both the coward and 
the hypocrite in refusing to stand by his previously pro- 
fessed convictions of Christian toleration and charity. 

2. The saintly St. Paul was so painfully conscious of this 
tendency to revert and degenerate that he testifies to ‘“‘ beat- 
ing till it is black and blue” (a free translation) his body, in 
order to hold it in subjugation ; and even in his old age he 
exclaims: ‘“ I exceedingly fear-and tremble lest, after I have 
preached to others, I myself shall become a castaway.” 

3. In the Book of Revelation, which closes the New Tes- 
tament canon, we find it recorded that large portions of the 
Christian Church—indeed every one of its seven great geo- 
graphical divisions to which the Apocalypse was addressed— 
had already reverted so far as to deserve severe reprimand for 
various heathenish corruptions and errors to which they had 
returned, while others had so rapidly degenerated as to be- 
come ‘‘ Anti-Christ.’”’” And future Anti-Christs were foretold 
and pictured in most repellent and horrible forms. 

4. The reversions and degenerations of the second, third, 
fourth, and every succeeding Christian century—increasing 
and deepening as the centuries came and went—are too 
numerous, too sad, and too well known for us here to re- 
count. Coming down to the eve of the twentieth century, 
let us glance at the condition and tendencies of Christianity 
as we find it to-day. 

5. After nearly nineteen hundred years of zealous efforts 
at self-propagation, ‘‘ making disciples,” not always with the 
method of Jesus, by ‘“‘ preaching the Gospel to every creat- 
ure,” but, as well, by proselyting, bribing, driving, compell- 
ing—resorting to sword and rack and dungeon, to anathema 
and scorn and contempt, to proffers of wealth and position 
and honor, to promises of heaven and threats of hell here- 
after—after all these many centuries of such zealous efforts 
at self-propagation, by methods of mingled good and ill, 
what has Christianity accomplished so amazingly different 


RANASCEN ST CHRISTIAN LLY,. 9 


from what other great religions have accomplished, as to 
entitle it to reprobate them all as “ false religions,” while it 
alone is so infallibly true as to be “an exception ” to other- 
wise universally prevailing laws? Putting aside the past, 
what are the actual conditions and tendencies of Christianity 
at the close of this nineteenth century ? 

Roughly stated, according to statistics, three fourths of 
mankind are still zealous adherents of the pagan or “ false” 
religions. One fourth of mankind are xominally Christians. 
Of this one fourth of mankind who are nxomznally Christians, 
three fourths are zealous adherents of Roman and of Greek 
Catholicism. So, one fourth of mankind are xomznally Chris- 
tians; and one fourth of the zomznal Christians are nominal 
Protestants. Of these zomznal Protestants three fourths are 
not professed Christians. So, of nominal Protestants only 
one fourth are professed Christians. Of these professed 
Protestant Christians—such an insignificant fraction of man- 
kind—it is not for us to judge how many there are to whom 
the Divine Master—in his now invisible but ever-present 
personality—is saying, as he said to the pious formalists 
and ritualists of old, ‘“‘ Ye hypocrites, how can ye escape the 
condemnation of Hades?” and again: “ I never knew you: 
depart from me ye that work iniquity.” Professed Chris- 
tians are by no means the same thing as genuine Christians, 
whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Greek Catholic. 
Most Protestants think that there are very few, if any at all, 
of genuine Christians outside of the Protestant Churches. 
The Roman and Greek Catholics not only so judge with 
reference to each other, but join heartily to return the com- 
pliment—with redoubled emphasis—to all the Protestant 
sects. Though there is doubtless a great deal of truth in 
the counter-charges, it would be better for all sides to observe 
the injunction of the Divine Master—“ Judge not.” 

6. With these rough estimates and these counter-charges 
as to genuineness before us, disheartening as it is, we are 
still more disheartened by learning from recent statements 
of the “great Evangelist” of orthodox Protestantism, pub- 
licly made at revival meetings in the city of New York, that 


IO RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
tat aed Step hrc nanne nsec owe ee 


40,000,000 of souls in Christendom (more likely to be 100,- 
000,000) are to-day unreached by any form of Christianity, 
to say nothing of the three fourths of mankind who are still 
pagans! Moreover, he assures us that “last year in two 
Protestant denominations alone, 3000 churches report no 
accessions.’ From other sources we learn that, in the 
United States of America, all the churches and chapels and 
mission halls taken together do not provide sittings for one 
third of our population. Of these sittings for about one third 
of our population, on an average, fully one half remain un- 
occupied on every Sunday, except on some such special 
occasions as Christmas and Easter Day, when the decora- 
tzons and music are to be especially fine. These sittings for 
about one third of our population, not more than half of 
which, on an average, are occupied, are—as any observer in 
any part of our country must have often noticed—occupied 
by at least six girls and women to one man, with rarely a 
young man ora child to be seen. The men, as a rule (and 
large numbers of women also), especially those of the more 
scholarly, refined, and moral classes, are practically not in- 
fluenced, and seemingly will never be, by what is known as 
Orthodox Christianity. What is true of the United States 
of America, in the above regards, is substantially true of all 
Protestant communities everywhere ; and, largely true, also in 
all the more civilized and intelligent communities of Roman 
and Greek Catholicism. To these general statements is 
added another from unprejudiced and authoritative sources 
with reference to the arrested growth of what are known as 
Foreign Missions. What these Missions have accomplished 
to date, so far as statistics of converts are concerned, may 
be inferred from a glance at Asia alone. Three fifths of the 
entire population of the earth—more than 700,000,000 of 
souls—inhabit Asia; and all these, to-day as firmly as ever, 
adhere to the Buddhistic, Confucian, and Mohammedan 
Religions—except about a half million of Protestant, and 
ten millions of Roman and Greek Catholic Christians. After 
so many years and so much money spent in zealous propa- 
gandism, only about a half-million out of more than seven 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. LE 


Se ee ee 


hundred millions of souls are drawn to Protestant Christi- 
anity; and these are, asa rule, from the lowest intellectual 
and social classes. Moreover, we are assured by almost the 
united voices of all the higher intellectual and social classes 
of this immense population of Asia (three fifths of the entire 
population of the earth) that no form of what is known as 
Orthodox Christianity will ever be accepted or can hope to 
make any noticeable progress among them. Their own re- 
ligions, so far from decaying, are reviving. Their magni- 
ficent Temples of Worship are being restored and new ones 
erected. Their priests are becoming more learned, noble, 
and pure. Their worshippers are growing more intelligent, 
moral, and devout. They are even beginning to return the 
compliment of their Christian friends by sending mission- 
aries to Christian lands to proclaim, not that Christianity is 
a “false” religion and all Christians “heathen ” (which no 
well-bred or intelligent Asiatic would ever think, much less 
teach), but to show to Christians what is best in their much 
maligned religions, and to convince them of the verity of 
their own Scripture—“ Of a truth I perceive that God is no 
respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth 
Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Hine: 
adding, perchance, some needed instructions upon one of 
their own beautiful Scripture texts, “ He who is beloved of 
God honors every form of Religious Faith.” Thus are we 
not only humiliated as to what our beloved Christianity has 
actually accomplished in the world, but are brought to a 
certain conviction also, that it is ‘no exception ”’ to all other 
things in the universe, so far as concerns its essential con- 
formity to the three great laws known as Struggle for Ex- 
istence, Survival of the Fittest, and Tendency to Revert. 
This last law is the one that has been most disastrously for- 
gotten. “Degeneration” has wrought its deadly havoc 
with the pure, simple, and lofty teachings of Jesus all adown 
the ages. Heathen fables, traditions, and methods, have 
always been permitted to intertwine and interweave them 
selves. From the first century and increasingly down to the 
present century, the Christian Church has been very largely 


12 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


tp ne 


Pagan. Christians have, for the most part, worshipped 
Heathen Deities under Christian names. The prophets have 
prophesied falsely and the people have loved to have it 
so! The mild but radical Jesus has been so grievously mis- 
conceived, and so untruthfully presented that he would 
hardly recognize himself in any of the popular creeds, ser- 
mons, or even Bibles wherein he has been portrayed for so 
many centuries ; and, more than any other teacher the world 
has ever known, would have reason to exclaim, ‘‘Save me 
from my friends!” Such-already has been Christianity’s 
tendency to revert, and so will it continue—even to a final 
and entire return to Heathenism—unless it renounces its 
heathenish errors and retains nothing except the simple 
truth as it was taught by Jesus. It is high time that this 
should be done. Certain Bishops of the Church of England 
not long ago were keenly satirized by a famous essayest of 
their own church for tragically declaring “It is high time 
that something should be done for the honor of our Lord’s 
Godhead!” Not this is what is needed—too much, by far, 
of this already! But what zs needed and what, in the 
twentieth and succeeding centuries, must come—is begin- 
ning to come already—is Renascent Christianity. 


IX.—THE SIMPLE TRUTH AS IT WAS IN JESUS. 


“The simple truth as it was in Jesus”’ is Christianity pure 
and true. To get hold of this Truth as best we can, and 
bring it forth, and make it live and flourish again is Renas- 
cent Christianity. This, and this alone, is the sacred object, 
the holy aim of what is now widely known as Higher Criti- 
cism of the Bible. Jesus had no system, wrote or dictated 
no creed, suggested no cult, imposed no dogma, insisted 
upon no essential doctrine. His “ doctrines” were simple 
teachings which every child might understand—beatitudes, 
parables, commendations of sincerity and charity, con- 
demnations of hypocrisy and of self-love, ethical maxims, 
theological axioms, beautiful affirmations of eternal life to 
the truly righteous, and sad warnings of eternal death to 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 13 


See ee Ree nee a ae enn aa ee eee papers ere Sale TERT 


those who persist in unrighteous deeds or in unholy desires 
and thoughts. These, together with his foundation teachings, 
his corner-stone truths, of the Fatherhood of God and the 
Brotherhood of Man, constituted His Gospel—His entire 
Gospel. ‘Go ye into all the world and preach ¢hzs Gospel 
to every creature; whosoever receiveth it and openly main- 
tains it [is baptized] shall be saved; whosoever rejecteth it 
shall be condemned.” This was all. And had it remained 
all, the kingdom of God would have come and His will would 
have been done on earth, as in heaven, a thousand—yes, 
fifteen hundred years ago! 

But hardly had the Divine Voice of Jesus ceased to be 
audibly heard before “ degeneration” set in. The same 
voice continued to speak in the unceasing whispers of the 
Spirit of Truth—the Holy Spirit—which had been promised. 
The holiest of the Apostles and first disciples listened to it 
and, for the most part, followed its dictates. They too con- 
structed no system, composed no creed, organized no cult— 
beyond such simple offices, methods, and symbols as Jesus 
himself had suggested—compounded no dogma, imposed no 
essential doctrines, wrote no sacred book, but simply 
“preached the Gospel to every creature,” as Jesus had 
preached it to them. “ Repent, accept this Gospel of Jesus, 
openly practise and promulgate it, and thus work out your 
own salvation and the salvation of mankind.” This was all 
we hear of in the Apostolic Church of the first quarter-cen- 
tury after the visible departure of Jesus. Had it remained 
all, we repeat, the kingdom of God would have come and 
His will would have been done on earth as in heaven, a 
thousand—yes, fifteen hundred years ago! But poor human 
nature, alas! Its tendency to revert is even stronger and 
more persistent in religion than in any other thing. As the 
half-domesticated flower or plant tends strongly to become the 
wild flower or plant of the prairie or field again ; as the half- 
tamed bird or colt tends strongly to become free and fero- 
cious again; as the half-civilized African or Indian tends 
strongly to become a drivelling and roving savage again; as 
the half-illumined mind and the half-elevated character tends 


14 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

ae ane 
strongly to revert to intellectual stupidity and to moral stag- 
nation again—so the half-domesticated, half-tamed, _half- 
civilized, half-illumined, half-elevated soul tends strongly to 
revert to the sensuous and senseless superstitions of its 
original Heathenism. Like Milton’s lion half-embedded in 
slime and pawing to be free—whenever it ceases Zo paw for 
ats freedom, it sinks downward and is lost again. So it has 
come to pass in every one of the many religions of the world. 
Every one of them started as pure, simple, and reasonable 
reforms. The leader of every one of them was, in some sense 
or degree, a Christ of God—an “anointed,” a divinely ac- 
cepted and sanctioned redeemer and saviour of mankind. 
While the Divine Leader or Master remained visible among 
his little band of followers all went well. When he was 
seen no more, and the Spirit of Truth which had spoken 
audibly through him began to speak only in inward whis- 
pers “to teach and to guide” those who would listen “into 
all truth,” only a few souls of men were found pure enough 
and lofty enough to listen, and to be taught and guided by 
its holy dictates. When these “few ” passed away degenera- 
tion always began, and from century to century increased ; 
so that every religion of the world has again and .again 
reverted to Heathenism, needing unceasing reformers and un- 
ending reforms in order to rescue it from hopeless decay. 
To all this, again we say, Christianity has been, zs no excep- 
tion. The “degenerates,” in Christianity as in every one of 
the other great religions of the world, plead super-naturalism. 
“ Ours is a super-natural religion, the true, ¢he one and only 
true religion. God incarnated Himself as a man in order 
to reveal and establish z¢, and so zt, cannot decay. He 
appointed infallible guardians, authoritative keepers, an in- 
errant book, holy sacraments, heavenly ceremonials, saving 
mysteries, divine agencies, and directions of every sort, so 
that a// ts exactly as He desires it to be in our religion.” So 
affirms the “degenerate” of every form of religion the 
world has ever known. In one phrase or another he defies 
the reformer with the assertion—mzy religion is founded on a 
rock and the gates of hell shall not prevail against 7#/ He 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 15 


— 


Sani Ree getter eee ee 
listens not to the primal cautions and warnings which the 
Divine Founders of all the religions have joined to give to 
their followers. “Take heed that ye do not as the heathen 
Howe Watch; what l say unto one I say unto all, watch.” 
Neither will he hearken unto what ° the spirit saith unto 
the churches ”—alike to the churches of every religion the 
world has ever known. Such is the zusistent hardness of 
heart and blindness of mind—“ Their eyes have they closed 
and their ears have they stopped, lest they should see and 
hear and be converted and I should heal them ’”’—of the 
leaders and supporters of degenerate religion the world 
over. And Christianity is no exception. 


Nie BACK ML Our Ro ]} PRINCIPLES. 


“Back to first principles ; back to the original sources ; 
back to the simple truth as uw was in the Divine Founder !” 
This must be the loud and the unceasing cry of every true 
religious reformer. And the Reformer of Christianity can 
not be an exception. 


XIL—THE ORIGINAL SOURCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 


Christianity is a Religion, he Religion of Eclecticism. Its 
founder was the great Religious Eclectic of the World. He 
taught nothing new, but culled from every field. His epoch 
was at the meeting and parting of all the ways. The land 
in which he lived was overrun with representatives of every 
religious faith. The writings or verbal teachings of all the 
Divine Masters of all the Divine Religions of the earth were 
before his eyes or sounding in his ears. Not an accent of 
the Holy Ghost was he heedless of. All fell as so much good 
seed into the fruitful soil of his lofty mind and heart, and 
forthwith sprang up unto a Hundred-fold Harvest. He 
utterly disclaimed the teaching of any ew Truth. “To this 
end was I born, and for this came Linto the world, that I 
should bcar witness tothe Truth. . . - The words that I 
speak unto you I speak not of myself. . . . Itis written. 


16 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
ane ea Oh ee er 

And again it is written. . . . He that is not 
against me ison my side. . . . He that doeth the will 
of my Father who is in Heaven, the same is my brother, 
and my sister, and my mother.” So spake and proclaimed 
again and again this great Religious Eclectic of nineteen 
centuries ago. As the invisible Spirit of Truth, during all 
these centuries He has been speaking and proclaiming the 
same thing— My doctrine is not mine. . . . The words 
which ye hear are not mine” but His “ who sent me,’’ and 
who “has not left Himself without the same witness in any 
nation or among any people.” 

What, then, are the Original Sources of Christianity ? AZ 
the Holy Teachings of all the Religions of the World. Every- 
thing in all Holy Books or Holy Traditions of Mankind 
which was genuinely good, and beautiful, and true, the 
Divine Jesus seized upon by a sort of omniscient faculty of 
mind and soul; appropriated it—in the name of the Com- 
mon Heavenly Father—and wrought it into those Teachings 
which constitute the sum and substance of his Everlasting 
Gospel. There is nothing new under the sun. All Truth 
that is xecessary to man’s spiritual elevation had been revealed 
by the Holy Spirit, and spoken by the holy prophets and 
sages of all nations before Jesus came. Nota Truth, nora 
fragment of a Truth, entirely new did he utter or profess to 
utter. All that he said had been said, in other ways, before. 
“Search the Scriptures ”’ of every Ancient Religion that has 
survived till now, and you will find it all. “These are they 
that testify of me.” Christianity itself was Universal Re- 
ligion renascent. Jesus was “its resurrection and itslifess 
His mind was the crucible and his soul the alembic, in which 
was fused and from which was distilled zz new jorm, the 
Eternal Truth of God; which Truth had been a common 
“‘ Deposit” of all the Great Religions,—a “ Faith,” not 
“once,” but ever and forever, “ delivered to the Saints,” 

So we arrive at the fact, which needs to be constantly re- 
peated, that Christianity is a Religion, zhe Religion of Eclec- 
ticism ; and Jesus its founder, ze great Religious Eclectic of 
the World. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. iy: 


XII.—WHAT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES? 


Christianity, “which was Universal Religion renascent,” 
existed long before there were any New Testament Script- 
ures. How dong before no one can exactly tell, for “ God 
buried ¢he body of this Moses, and no man knoweth of his 
grave to this day!” Sufficient is the fact that Christianity 
could exist, does exist, and can exist without any especzal 
Holy Book feculiar to itself. All books are its Holy Books, 
and all Truth is its Revelation. 

But, within a generation or two after the wzszble and aud- 
ble retirement of its Divine Founder, Christianity—which 
had already spread over the known earth—seemed to need 
the support of some Written Records. So “many took it in 
hand to write.” Who they were nobody exactly knows, and 
it matters not. The things that were written were so numer- 
ous and, for the most part, so spurious and worthless, that 
after perhaps two hundred years, a few of the more helpful 
and reliable of the manuscripts were sifted out, and gathered 
into what is now knownas the Canon of the New Testament. 
As to their special inspiration or inerrancy, not a claim was 
made by any of their writers nor by any of those who com- 
piled them into a single volume or “Canon.” They were 
issued and everywhere known as simple Biographies of Jesus 
and Letters to Churches. As such they were, and are, Liter- 
ature—sacred Literature indeed, but still Literature. So 
they were held to be for two or three centuries, at which 
time Christianity began to revert to Heathenism so rapidly 
that these Writings were soon transformed into a Charm or 
Fetich: and, more and more as Degeneration progressed 
and the centuries went on, they were idolized instead of 
“searched.” Finally they were united in one volume or 
“Canon,” with those Selections from Ancient Hebrew Liter- 
ature which had come to be known as the Old Testament 
Scriptures; and the two Collections of Writings combined 
were called the Bible. A next step was to pronounce them 
the Word of God: and a next, to hold them inerrant and in- 
fallible—God’s miraculous and only Revelation to Mankind ! 
From this point of downward tendency, all the rest was 

2 


18 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

EI al Net Y Re lie nme a el NU Lehn ET 
natural and easy. ‘“ Facilis est descensus Avernt.’ Anathe- 
mas upon all who should question or doubt; Salvation for all 
who meekly received; and Damnation for all “ Jews, Turks, 
Infidels, and Heretics” who should dare to reject ! Apostolic, 
Nicene,and Athanasian Creeds which, ‘“‘ whosoever believeth 
shall doubtless be saved, and whosoever believeth not shall 
doubtless be damned!” Sacraments, without which there 
can be no Salvation! Rituals of Worship, without which no 
man can please God! An infallible Church, outside of which 
all are without God and without hope! Vicarious Blood, 
without which all mankind must eternally perish! Inter- 
cession of saints, without which none can receive the mercies 
of God! Infallible Popes for Roman Catholics! Infal- 
lible Councils for Greek Catholics! An infallible Apostolic 
Church for English Catholics! And, for all orthodox Prot- 
estant sects alike, an infallible Book! Such has been the 
tendency to revert, and such its appalling results. And all 
because it was supposed that Christianity—which arose, flour- 
ished, and gloriously prevailed for two hundred years with. 
out any Holy Book, and for half a century without any 
recognized New Testament writings at all—could not possi- 
bly get along without some “ infallible ” book, church; coun- 
cil, or Pope, to compel and sustain it. A heathenish 
principle adopted to begin with; and, Heathenism rampant 
ever since, as a consequence. 

But now ’t is time, high time, to return to “ The Truth as 
it was in Jesus.” And all broadest minds and greatest souls 
of humanity are demanding the return. The twentieth cen- 
tury will be the opening age, not of any Protestant Reforma- 
tion merely, but of a Religious Reform world-wide and 
erghteen centuries deep ; and this reform will be—in spirit, not 
in name—Renascent Christianity. 


XIII.—- THE RENASCENT BIBLE. 


With the written records called the Bible this reform has 
vigorously begun, and shall more vigorously continue. The 
Bible, not as an infallible or as a supernatural book, but as a 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. ite) 


volume of Sacred Literature: one of many, but probably best 
of all and containing the Truth of all,—as the vastly superior 
results of its teachings have thus far seemed to indicate— 
this is the first position taken, and now to be maintained, by 
the Higher Criticism. As an indication of what is already 
astir in the Christian world regarding this great impending 
Reform, a quotation just taken from a leading book review 
is here added, with the remark that the list of names given 
contains for the most part those of wltra-conservative work- 
ers in the cause of Biblical Revision and the New Criticism. 


XIV.—THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE. 


“The Bible as Literature is a compilation of articles upon 
the subject by Professor Richard G. Moulton, Ph.D., Rev. 
John P. Peters, Ph.D., Rev. A. B. Bruce, D.D., Rev. Henry 
Van Dyke, D.D., Professor W. J. Beecher, D.D., Rev. Will- 
iam E. Griffis, D.D., Rev. William H. Cobb, D.D., Professor 
Max Kellner, D.D., Professor Lewis B. Paton, M.A., Pro- 
fessor Marvin R. Vincent, D.D., Professor George Frederick 
Wright, D.D., Professor George B. Stevens, Ph.D., D.D., 
Rev. Samuel T. Lowrie, D.D., Professor M. S. Terry, D.D., 
and Professor Albert S. Cook, Ph.D. It may well be im- 
agined that some pointed things are said by these writers, 
who represent progressive theology in this country. Pro- 
fessor Moulton declares that the Bible, the very name of 
which may be translated as ‘literature,’ is a ‘literature 
smothered by reverence,’ and he goes on to say: ‘To the 
devout reader the Bible has become a storehouse of isolated 
texts, of good words. He scarcely realizes that it exhibits 
the varieties of literary form familiar to him elsewhere— 
essays, epigrams, sonnets, stories, sermons, songs, philo- 
sophical observations and treatises, histories and legal docu- 
ments. Even dramas are to be found in the Bible, and also 
love songs; nay, so far does dumb show enter into the 
ministry of Ezekiel that some of his compositions might 
fairly be described as tableaux-vivants. The distinction 
between things sacred and things secular, which exercises so 


20 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
SEARED SESE sierra 


questionable an influence upon our times, seems unknown 
to the world of the Old Testament. Its literature embraces 
national anthems of Israel in various stages of its history, 
war ballads with rough refrains, hymns of defeat and vic- 
tory, or for triumphant entrance into a conquered capital ; 
pilgrim songs, and the chants with which the family parties 
beguiled the journeys to the great feasts; fanciful acrostics 
to clothe sacred meditations or composed in compliment to 
a perfect wife; even the games of riddles which belong to 
such social meetings as Samson’s wedding. With the single 
exception of humorous literature, for which the Hebrew 
temperament has little fitness, the Bible presents as varied an 
intellectual food as can be found in any national literature.’ ” 


As another indication of “ what is astir” in the way of 
trying to fulfill the prophetic words and method of the 
Divine Founder of Christianity, we add here another quota- 
tion from the same recent book review as that inserted in 
the section immediately preceding. 


“Warfare of Science with Theology.” 


“The aim of the author of this work, Hon. Andrew D. 
White, late President of Cornell University, has been, in his 
own words, ‘to try to aid in letting the light of historical 
truth into the decaying mass of outworn thought which at- 
taches the modern world to medieval conceptions of Chris- 
tianity, and which still lingers among us—a most serious 
barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the whole 
normal evolution of society.’ Behind this barrier he sees 
the flood of increased knowledge and new thought rapidly 
rising with the danger of a sudden breaking away, distressing 
and calamitous, sweeping before it not only outworn creeds 
and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles and ideals, and 
even wrenching out most precious religious and moral 
foundations of the whole social and political fabric. ‘ My 
belief is,’ he says, ‘that in the field left to them—their 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 21 


be eee 


proper field—the clergy will more and more, as they cease 
to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do 
work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they 
have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My con- 
viction is that science, though it has evidently conquered 
dogmatic theology based on Biblical texts and ancient modes 
of thought, will go hand in hand with religion; and that al- 
though theological control will continue to diminish, religion, 
as seen in the recognition of ‘a power in the universe, not 
ourselves, which makes for righteousness,’ and in the love of 
God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and 
stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning, 
but in the world at large.” 


The Christian Bible, like the other sacred Scriptures of the 
world, is henceforth to be reckoned and treated as literature. 
As such every intelligent and honest student of w will, not only 
profoundly revere it (as containing most sacred Truth), but 
also must sharply inspect, critically investigate, and unspar- 
ingly sift it, in order to help gather the wheat into the garner, 
but to burn the chaff in quenchless fire. There is much to be 
done; exactly what, can here only be indicated. 


XV.—HOW MYTHS GROW. 


A typical illustration may be presented which will suffice 
to show how myths grow; and how tradition should always 
be suspected, credulity restrained, and the records of tradi- 
tional literature examined critically and sifted unsparingly. 

Even while he was yet alive our own Emerson had occa- 
sion frequently to correct misstatements of his sayings that 
were rapidly and widely circulated, * as also to deny fables that 

* The author has preserved a letter which painfully reminds him of his own 
agency in this matter. Ministering one Sunday at the old Unitarian Church of 
Concord, in either the morning or evening services, he made reference to a 
sentence which he had caught, as he supposed, from Mr. Emerson’s lips during 
a lecture he had recently delivered in Music Hall, Boston, on the subject of 


Immortality. The next morning he received a politely worded letter from Miss 
Ellen Emerson, who had been present at both the services, saying she had 


22 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

oS AR Na itis OE 1h NE 
had already begun to grow concerning his personality and his 
doings. After his decease these misstatements and fables con- 
tinued not only to prevail, but also to increase; so that his 
various biographers—even within ten years of his decease— 
have been obliged to sift the evidences and sharply distin- 
guish between truth and fiction. This is by no means 
uncommon ; indeed, it is constant and universal, even in 
these latter days. How much more so in the former days ; 
and zucreasingly so, century by century, as we go backward 
to the ages of unwritten history, and of records preserved 
only in uncertain memories, and handed down by wonder- 
loving, and—almost always—party or partisan-regarding 
lips! 

Everybody knows how, even while they lived, and much 
more after they were dead, the personalities, deeds, and 
words of Peter the Great, Napoleon, and Wellington; of 
Walter Scott, Wordsworth, and Carlyle; of Washington, 
Webster, and Lincoln—as, indeed, of every other of the 
greatest men and women of modern centuries down to this. 
day—have quickly and persistently been distorted, per- 
verted, or, obscured by mysteries, fables, and myths. And 
no intelligent person will now read a history or a biog- 
raphy or any volume of general literature—recognized fiction 
alone excepted—which has not been sharply examined and 
thoroughly sifted in order to separate facts from fancies, 
exaggerations from realities, the genuine from the spurious. 
So is being fulfilled John the Baptist’s prophecy concerning 
the Living Christ—who has been and is the refining, purify- 
ing Spirit of all the ages—“ Whose fan is in his hand, and 
he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat 
into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with un- 
quenchable fire.” 
reported the quotation of the sermon to her father ; that he wished to thank the 
preacher for the honor, but also to assure him that neither the words nor the 
exact thought were his. Immediately the preacher, being entirely certain that 
he had heard accurately and quoted correctly, called upon Mr. Emerson— 
whom he already had the honor of knowing—to convince him of the truthful- 


ness of his report. The result was that, dy reference to the manuscript, the 
sentence was found to be as Mr. Emerson had affirmed. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 23 


ee 


As an additional hint of the fact that Myth-weaving and 
Fable-making are still widely and rapidly going on—even 
among “enlightened Protestants ”’—with reference to both 
Christianity and the Christian Bible, we may notice two 
general facts. The Theology of such books as Milton’s 
Paradise Lost, and the Christology of various Religious 
Novels, like Prince of the House of David and nearly every 
one of the many popular Lives of Christ, have insensibly so 
shaped, and colored, and changed original Christianity, the 
original Christ, and the original meanings of the Bible, that 
with every age of Protestantism—as truly though not as com- 
pletely as with the ages of Roman and Greek Catholicism 
which preceded it—veversions to Heathenism and conse- 
quent degeneration have been and are now going on. The 
popular Book Reviews of to-day are announcing whole crops 
and floods of popular Novels by popular Novelists who “have 
been engaged at enormous prices”’ to produce—for the 
Demetrius-Publishers, to be used for the diversion of the 
Great -is- Diana-of-the- Ephesians reading Public—various 
‘Silver Shrines for Diana” in the way of Popularized Lives 
of Christ! If such reversions and degenerations are per- 
mitted to continue, the Holy Bible will soon become a mere 
Gemara, like that which ruled the Jewish Church in the days 
of Jesus; and The Christ will be transformed into a mythic 
Achilles, Heracles, or Jove, as were the real heroes and 
shining Saints of Ancient Greece who, zo divert the masses, 
were permitted gradually to degenerate into the “ gods” of 
degenerate Greece, whose degenerate Holy Book came at 
length to be the Homeric Hymns to the Gods and the Theog- 
ony of Hesiod—the former the Old Testament and the latter 
the New Testament of their Bzble for the Masses ! 

This is the Age of Fiction. Such another has never 
before been known in History ; not excepting even that of 
St. Paul’s time, when “all the Athenians and the strangers 
sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either 
to tell or to hear something new.” Asa confirmation, note 
such an announcement as this, just made in a thousand 
periodicals and newspapers all over Christendom: ‘“ The 


24. RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


popular novelist has engaged to write a new story to 
be called ; and, though he has not yet set pen to paper 
to produce it, he has already been paid $27,000 in advance 
for the work.” Story-writers, Novelists, and Authors of 
Fiction—all commendable in their proper spheres and help- 
ful under reasonable limitations—are the heroes, sages, and 
divinities of to-day. They furnish ninety-nine one hundredths 
of the popular pabulum. They amass fortunes in a year and 
live in splendid luxury, as did the sophis¢s and literary clients 
of ancient Greece and Rome. Meanwhile the genuine phi- 
losopher, the ¢ruthful historian, the writer on exact or actual 
Science, the author of realistic Literature, the teacher or 
preacher of genuzne Religion “pure and undefiled before 
God the Father” now as ever—relatively speaking more 
than ever—must wear the “tattered cloak” and live in 
humble poverty and retirement. Verily, the danger of to- 
day, above that of any previous age that History tells us 
about, is, that Religion and all will end in Fiction—as tran- 
spired in the Ancient Empires of Greece and of Rome, and 
in every other decayed or decaying Empire and civilization 
of the Past. Who will “come up to the help of the Lord, 
to the help of the Lord against the mighty?” 


XVI.—THE WHEAT GARNERED, THE CHAFF BURNED. 


This prophecy must also and specially be fulfilled with 
reference to: first, the Bible itself, and then to the whole 
mass and body of Religious Literature, Theology, Dogmas, 
Traditions, Sacraments, Rituals, and Ecclesiasticism, wher- 
ever existing among civilized people upon the whole earth. 

““ Now also the ax is laid unto the root of the trees ; there- 
fore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn 
down and cast into the fire.” This is the perpetual venas- 
cence of the living Christ ; and this the “ prepare ye the way,” 
which all intelligent, reverent Christians ought hence- 
forth to hear and to heed. The need of this sharp examina- 
tion and of this thorough and unsparing sifting, overturning, 
pruning, and purifying, is greater by far as we approach the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 25 


VEE LTS SSS SS TE ore 
various records, traditions, and institutions of ancient times. 
We see myths growing, superstitions arising, and prevailing 
all about us even in these days of exact records, and of 
immediate and impartial investigation. In spite of our 
amanuenses and reporters; in spite of our wondrous modern 
arts, inventions, and appliances, of Photography, Phonetics, 
Phonographics, Telegraphy, Telephonics; in spite of our 
Omnipresent Press and Omniscient Eye of public inquisitive- 
ness, introspection, sharp discernment, and unsparing judg- 
ment, (“‘ quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged 
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and 
spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of 
the thoughts and intents of the heart,” so that there is “no 
creature that is not manifest, but all things are naked 
and open”)—in spite of all these astounding characteristics 
of our century, (which, more than all the preceding eighteen 
centuries combined, indicates the presence of the Living 
Christ, and proclaims the Kingdom of Heaven at hand,) 
even here and now—(right before our face and eyes)—we see 
myths growing, superstitions arising and prevailing. How 
must it have been then in the Bible-forming, dogma- 
fashioning, ritual-building, creed-making, cult-organizing 
ages! Among untutored, semi-civilized, and highly imagina- 
tive Orientals! When legend and fable, extravagance, ex- 
aggeration, and supernaturalism were the very nutriment of 
the popular mind, and the very atmosphere in which 
everybody lived and moved! When nothing was wrztten 
down, but everything called to remembrance, then circulated 
from mouth to mouth, from group to group, from country 
to country, and from generation to generation; till some 
well-meaning writer—himself also a product of his credulous 
age and a victim of his myth-loving environment—should 
“take it in hand to set forth, in order, a declaration of those 
things which are most truly believed among us a 

What need to add any further reasons for the Higher 
Criticism? What need of other enforcements of the sacred 
demands that are upon all intelligent students of the Bible, 
as of the other Sacred Scriptures of the world—to be, not 


26 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ses mcr eee ee eT 


only profoundly reverent, but also, (in the name and spirit of 
the Living Christ), sharply critical, and unsparingly honest 
and true, both in their own private investigation, and in 
whatever instruction they may find opportunity to give to 
others. 

Now as in all preceding ages, in Christianity as in Judaism 
and all other forms of Religion, in Protestantism as in 
Catholicism, in the United States of America as in other 
States and Countries of the Earth, degeneration continues 
and persists. The popular forms of Religion are always 
Reversions. Simply because they are Reversions they de- 
come and remain popular. ‘ The people love to have it so” 
—therefore the hireling-priests, now as ever, and ever as 
now, “prophesy falsely.” Such is the rise, progress, and 
numerical success of “popular” Religion the World over, 
and History through. The purest things are always unpopu- 
lar. Truth is always in the minority. Wide is the gate 
and broad is the way that leads to Degeneration ; strait is 
the gate and narrow the way that leads to Holiness and 
Truth. 

To-day the same as ever, here the same as in ancient Judea, 
the radical teachings and methods of Jesus are everywhere 
and urgently needed :—“ Howbeit in vain do they worship 
me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” 

For laying aside the commandments of God, ye 
hold the traditions of men, as the washing of pots and cups; 
and many other such like things ye do.” . . . “And He 
said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandments of 
God, that ye may keep your own traditions.” . . . “Mak. 
ing the Word of God of none effect through your tradition, 
which ye have delivered; and many such like things do ye.” 

“Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is 
hewn down and cast into the fire.” . . . “And it came 
to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people 
were astonished at his teachings; for he taught them as one 
having authority and not as their scribes.” 

“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost its 
Savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 27 


ee eee 


for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot 
of men. . . . Think not that Iam come to destroy the 
Law as delivered by prophets; I am not come to destroy, 
but to full. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and 
earth pass, one jot or one tittle of the Law shall in no wise 
pass, till all be fulfilled.” 

So spake, and speaks, the Living Christ. 


XVII.—ECLECTICISM, INCLUSIVENESS, CATHOLICISM, 
CHRISTIANITY. 


THREE ANALOGOUS CONVERSATIONS. 


(a) Sectionalism and Cosmopolitanism. 


First American.—* You say that all countries of the earth 
are interesting and beautiful. Why then do you not go and 
reside in them ?”’ 

Second American.— For three reasons. frst. This is 
the country of my adoption and home. Second. My friends 
and interests are chiefly here. TZ/ird. To me this is the 
most interesting and beautiful country of the earth. There- 
fore, I prefer to continue my residence here.” 


(b) Sectarianism and Catholicism. 


First Churchman.—* You say that all denominations of 
Christians are parts of the true Church. Why then do you 
not become a member of them ?”’ 

Second Churchman.— For three reasons. rst. Ours is 
the church of my adoption and communion. Second. My 
associations and anticipations are largely confined to it. 
Third. To me it is more nearly Christian in its beliefs and 
methods than is any other of the denominations. There- 
fore, my duty is to remain where I eile 


(c) Exclusivism and Christianity. 


First Christian —“ You say that there is divine truth and 
goodness in all Pagan religions. Why then do you not be- 


28 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


SS Se 


come a Mohammedan, Jew, Confucian, Buddhist, Brahmin, 
or Zoroastrian ?”’ 

Second Christian.—< For three reasons. rst. Christian- 
ity is my native and life-long faith. Second. My spiritual 
life is quickened and purified by its teachings. Third. To 
me its truth is more completely divine than that found in the 
other religions. Therefore, it is my duty, my preference, 
and my choice to remain a Christian.” 


THE MORAL—AS DRAWN FROM THE NEW TESTAMENT. 


JESUS AS A JEW.—“ He that zs not with me ts against 
me. . . . Lhe woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by 
nation; and she besought him that he would cast Jorth the 
evil spirit out of her daughter. But Fesus said unto her, Let 
the children first be filled: for it ts not meet to take the chil- 
dren's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. . . . Lamnot 
sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

JESUS AS THE CHRIST.—“ And Fohn answered and said, 
Master, we saw one casting out evil spirits in thy name, and 
we forbade him, because he followeth not with us. And Fesus 
said unto him, Forbid him not: Jor he that ts not against us ts 
Jor us. Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same ts my 
brother, and sister, and mother. And other sheep I have, 
which are not of this fold: them also I must bring , 
and there shall be one Sold, and one shepherd.” 


THE DISCIPLE AS A SECTARIAN.—“4 nad they went, 
and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready 
Jor him. And they did not receive him. . . . And when 
his disciples James and ¥ohn saw this, they said, Master, wilt 
thou that we command fire to come down Srom heaven, and 
consume them.” 

THE DISCIPLE AS A FOLLOWER OF THE CHRIST.—“ Then 
Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that 
God ts no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that 
Seareth him, and worketh reghteousness, ts accepted with him.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 29 


re ne 


PAUL AS A DENOMINATIONALIST.—‘l gave my votce 
against them. And punished them oft in every synagogue, 
and compelled them to blaspheme ; and being exceedingly mad 
against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities.” 

PAUL AS A CHRISTIAN.—‘“ There 1s neither Greek nor Few, 
circumcision nor uncircumciston, Barbarian, Scythian, bond 


nor free. . . . There is no difference between the Few 
and the Greek: for the same Lord over all ts rich unto all 
that call upon him. . . . As he saith also in Osee, I will 


call them my people, which were not my people; and her be- 
loved, which was not beloved. And ut shall come to pass, that 
in the place where it was said unto them, Ye are not my people ; 
there shall they be called the children of the living God.” 


-THE MOoORAL—AS DRAWN FROM OTHER ANCIENT 
SACRED BOOKS OF THE WORLD. 


“ Have the religions of mankind no common ground? Ts 
there not everywhere the same enrapturing beauty beaming 
forth from many thousand hidden places? Broad, indeed, 
is the carpet God has spread, and beautiful the colors He has 
givenit. . . . There is but one lamp in this house, in the 
rays of which, wherever I look, a bright assembly meets me. 

O God! whatever road I take joins the highway that 
leads to Thee.” —PERSIAN SCRIPTURES. 


“What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.’’—HEBREW 
SCRIPTURE. 


“The catholic-minded man regards all religions as embody- 
ing the same truths ; the narrow-minded man observes only 
their differences.’ —CHINESE APOTHEGM. 


“ Altar flowers are of many species, but all Worship 1s one ; 
systems of Faith are different, but God ts one.’ —HINDU 
APOTHEGM. 


“ He who is beloved of God honors every form of Religious 
Faith.’ —BUDDHIST SCRIPTURE. 


30 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


mi Oe 
“ God ts by nature the Father of all men ; and all best men 


fle calls his sons.’ —GRECIAN SCRIPTURE. 


“Amid all the conflict of opinions there sounds through all 
the world one consenting law and idea,—that there is One God, 
the Ruler and Father of All. . . . Ido not blame the va- 
riety of representations, only let men understand there ts but 
One Divine Nature ; let them love One, and keep One ever in 
their thoughts.””—ROMAN SCRIPTURES. 


“If thou art a Mussulman, go stay with the Franks etfs 
thou art a Christian, mix with the Fews,; tf thou art a 
Shuah, mix with the Schismatics. Whatever ts thy religion, 
associate with men of opposite persuasions. I I} thou canst mix 
with them freely, and art not the least angered whilst listen- 
ing to their discourse, thou hast attained peace, and art a mas- 
ter of creatton.’—ARABIAN SCRIPTURES. 


“To him who on these pinions has risen and soared away to 
the throne of the Highest, all religions are like—Christians, 
Moslems, Guebers, Fews ;—all adore Him in thetr several 
way and form.”—PERSIAN APOTHEGM. 


CONCLUSION. 


Eclecticism is Inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is ¢yue Catholi- 
cism True Catholicism is genuine Christianity. 


XVIII.— CHRISTIANITY IS RELIGIOUS ECLECTICISM. 


True Christianity “was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
must be” Religious Eclecticism. All intelligent and unpreju- 
diced study of Comparative Religion must lead to Christianity 
—that is, to Religious Eclecticism as a method. One of the 
gravest errors that all the ages have thus far made, is that of 
supposing Jesus to have been a Sectarian and his Religion a 
Sect. Every man is likely to portray his Master or Leader 
in Religion, as he does his God, after his own pattern. The 
masses of men have always created God “in their own image 


RENASCEING “CHRISTIANITY. 31 


sh he TEL eben ela a LEG LSS Se Se is EE 
and after ¢heizr own likeness.” An elephant, a tiger, a 
monkey, a snake would quite naturally (and quite excusa- 
bly)dothe same. Exactly so the great Masters and Leaders 
of Religion have always been conceived of by the masses, 
by the ninety-nine out of a hundred, we may say, as nearly 
if not altogether like unto themselves. Ninety-nine out of 
a hundred are bigoted; being so, they build fences about 
their own Religious Conceptions and shut themselves zm, 
and all who have different Conceptions owt. They, and all 
the rest who are zuside, are adherents of the one only and 
true Religion—the true Church. “The Chosen of God” 
are they ; while all outs¢de are Schismatics, Heretics, Infidels, 
Pagans, Heathen. Naturally these ninety-nine out of a 
hundred—whether Buddhists, Mohammedans, or Christians 
—always have done, and, so long as they continue bigoted, 
always will do, the same with their chosen Master’s person- 
ality and teachings. Around Gautama, Mohammed, and 
Jesus alike they have built—from the beginning till now— 
fences of Fables, Traditions, Ecclesiasticisms, Dogmas, and 
Creeds. All who should choose to come within those fences 
would be The Faithful, holding the True and Saving Faith; 
all others would be “‘ Anathema.” In order to justify them- 
selves they have claimed that secret orders were somehow 
communicated by their great Leaders to some Chief Apostle, 
or to his successors, commanding these “‘ fences” to be built 
and diligently kept up. No records, no tradition even, of 
such a command or of such “secret orders” are anywhere to 
be found. But bigotry in general, and priest-craft in par- 
ticular, always falls back upon infallible Councils, on in- 
fallible Churches, or infallible Popes whenever the infallible 
Book proves insufficient. So has it been in all the Religions. 
Gautama, Mohammed, Jesus, and all the great Masters have 
been alike treated in this as in almost every other respect. 
Human nature is human nature everywhere. The masses 
are always the masses. Priest-craft is everywhere priest- 
craft. Bigots, like thorns, brambles, and weeds, cover the 
earth. 


32 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
Te TA ARINRSLION tbe GOSS UII AU CAL SI iel! LANA SRC WIENER Ley 
XIX.—JESUS NO SECTARIAN, HIS RELIGION NO SECT. 


In spite of all this, Jesus was no Sectarian, and his reli- 
gion was no Sect. As wide as humanity were his sym- 
pathies, as old as human history was his Church. No 
“fences,” except those of humility and of penitence—of a 
desire to be pure in heart and of an aspiration to hunger 
and thirst after righteousness—did he build or tolerate. He 
was the friend of publicans and sinners, of Samaritan 
heretics, and of theological outcasts. His only detestations 
were for pompous, self-conceited “Saints,” who clorified 
themselves and despised others. His only rejections were 
those of “Scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites ” and “ Priests 
and Levites passing by on the other side ”’—using terms of 
to-day, hypocritical clergymen, self-parading Doctors of 
Divinity, bigoted and cold-hearted Church officials, and the 
front-seat-always-on-hand Church members who “devour 
widows’ houses and for a pretence make long prayers.” 
These, and these only, he detested and rejected, saying: 
‘Woe! woe!—Therefore shall ye receive the greater condem- 
nation. . . . Thieves and harlots shall go into the Kingdom 
of God before you.” Jesus then was a sectarian only in the 
sense that he excluded all hypocrites, bigots, and religious 
formalists. His religion was a “Sect” so broad that it 
included—the earth over and humanity through—all who 
were humble, loving, and sincere. This is the eclecticism of 
genuine Christianity to-day, “as it was in the beginning 
and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.” 


XX.—STUDY OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION LEADS TO 
CHRISTIANITY. 


As we have already said, to this genuine Christianity, 
whose method is religious eclecticism, all intelligent and un- 
prejudiced study of Comparative Religion must lead. “To 
which of these religions do you belong? To all, for all 
combined constitute the genuine religion.” These are well 
known words of Goethe. They may be taken as the Uni- 
versal Creed of all greatest scholars, poets, prophets, sages, 
and saints, including Jesus. Jesus himself formulated the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 33 


OS 


Creed so far as its substance was concerned. Goethe only 
condensed the whole life, and Gospel, of the Divine Nazarene 
into a single sentence when he composed those words. In- 
deed they are almost an exact rescript of the only Creed of 
Jesus that the New Testament traditions have handed down 
to us: “ Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 
Whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in Heaven, 
the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Upon the 
mind of the writer of these pages these words of Jesus made 
a deep impression in his early youth, and gradually shaped 
his Theology and directed his Religious life. While 
a schoolboy, a devout member and communicant of the 
Presbyterian Church, he heard a sermon preached by what 
was called a “loose though scholarly” Presbyterian min- 


“sister upon the above words, and in the above spirit 


(though cautiously worded “for fear of the Jews”). 
That sermon helped him more than all the other sermons 
listened to during his student days. One figure used by 
the preacher he never could forget: Truth has been 
broken into a thousand fragments; every Religious sect and 
school has a fragment or two, at which they are tugging 
away, supposing it to be the whole Truth. What all great 
minds and Christlike souls are seeking to do is, to put an end 
to the janglings and strife by bringing the fragments together 
into One United Truth. This was agood figure. Similar ones 
have since met the writer’s eye:—‘“ Religious Truth is a 
Shield (not of two only but of a thousand sides); view every 
side, then will you have the Whole Truth.” —“ All Religions 
are the same wine in different colored glasses.” This from 
Emerson would be a more exact figure if thus stated :—All 
forms of Religion are the same wine tz different dilutions and 


in different colored glasses. Oriental figures are :—“The 
many rays emanating from one central lamp ”—“ The vari- 
ous colors of the beautiful carpet God has spread ””—“ Altar 
flowers are of many species, but all Worship is one.” —“ To 


him who on these pinions has risen and soared away to the 
throne of the Highest, all religions are like; Christians, 


Moslems, Guebers, Jews, all who are humble and sincere, 
3 


34 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


adore Him in their several ways and forms.”” To which may 
be added the saying of that Chief Apostle of Jesus, St. Peter, 
“Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; 
but in every nation he that revereth Him and worketh right- 
eousness is accepted with Him.” 


XXI.—CHRISTIANITY A VAST GRADED SCHOOL OF RELIGION. 


While accepting all these and similar figures as helpful, the 
writer finds more of comprehensiveness and of exact corre- 
spondence to World-wide, History-through facts in this 
similitude.—A great, complex, various, and ever varying 
System of Education adapted to every degree of intelligence 
and of culture; ranging from the Nursery and Kindergarten 
departments up through the Primary and other various 


grades to the College, the University, and the Post-Univer-: 


sity; with instructors and instructions adapted to each—like 
teachers like pupils, “like priests like people.’ —Such, in the 
wise Providence of the Eternal, is the Universal Religion of 
Mankind with its numerous and diversified Schools or Sects. 
If this Providential Scheme could only be recognized ; if each 
department would attend to its own work and not attempt 
to dictate to, monopolize, or absorb (much less to anathema- 
tize) the others; if Priests, Ministers, or Teachers in the 
several grades would gracefully accept their especial stations 
and seek only to advance their congregations, and to graduate 
them upward as rapidly as possible—then all sectarianism, 
bitterness, rivalry, and hatred would cease and the Kingdom 
of God would at once be here. This was the Gospel of Jesus; 
it is time for us to go (as the first disciples did) into all the 
world and preach it to every creature. This is the Eclecticism 
of Christianity as Jesus taught and founded it. And this 
is Renascent Christianity. 


XXII.—PROVE ALL; HOLD FAST THE GOOD. 


While yet a student in Williams College, but more es- 
pecially in the Union Theological Seminary of New York 
and in the Yale College Divinity School, the writer was 
frequently reproached by his fellow-students for his habit of 


<> 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 35 


closely questioning and often refusing to accept, the Calvin- 
istic Dogmas of his Presbyterian Sect, Text-books, and Pro- 
fessors. ‘These profound books, these learned instructors, 
our dignified and respectable Presbyterian Faith—who are 
you, a mere schoolboy, to question them!” The response 
always was,—Yes, but every one of the fifty or more Pro- 
testant Sects claims that z# has profound books, learned in- 
structors, a dignified and respectable Faith. The Roman 
Catholics claim the same; so do the Greek Catholics; so do 
the Jews; so does every one of the various schools and sects 
of the Mohammedan, Buddhistic, Confucian, Brahmanistic, 
Zoroastrian, and other Religions of the World. All alike 
claim and proclaim their wisdom, scholarship, and wide in- 
fluence. Asa fact there ave learned men, influential men, 
and saintly men in them all. What then shall I dow lo 
whom listen? Which especial System or Sect shall I un- 
questioningly accept? The one in which I was born? 
Then—“ By the simple accident of birth I might have been 
High-Priest to Mumbo Jumbo.” 

No! I will listen to a//, will question every one ; and from 
them all will accept whatever I intelligently and honestly 
can. “Prove all things; hold fast that which ts good.” 

The great question is—not Which Religion, Church, Sect, 
School, System sazts me best; to which can | most conventently 
and agreeably belong? This may do as a starter; may be 
excusable until one can find time and opportunity to become 
broader and wiser, so as to make choice from his own intellt- 
gent conviction. But the “ great question ” is, What, 22 each 
and in all, can J accept as true, and conscientiously make 
into a Creed by which to guide and inspire my life? Of 
course such a Creed cannot be arrived at ina day or in a year. 
So every creed should be a gradual and a growing one— 
always open to new light, eager for improvement, like the 
busy bee ‘“‘gathering honey from every flower,” and ready 
to be changed or even retracted should growing intelligence 
and holiness combined demand it. 


“What! Changed your mind so soon? Not /. 
But z¢; that, changing to my thoughts, has changed my mind.” 


36 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“Yesterday you wore acloak: Why not to-day?” “Yes- 
terday was cold—to-day is warm.” Consistency is more 
frequently the fool’s excuse, the sluggard’s plea, or the 
coward’s boast than the watch-word of those who are wise, 
devoted, and brave. 


“ Constancy in Error ts Constant Folly.” 


In Religion—which is, more than anything else, a matter 
of unfolding intuitions, of widening wisdom, and of evolving 
Spiritual Life—all this is especially pertinent and true. 


XXIII.—THE RELIABLE CREED AND ITS ESSENTIAL TESTS. 


But how perplexing it all is ; and, after all, who can hope ever 
to arrive at any permanent certainty! To these very natural 
exclamations answers may be made as follows: First—No 
creed is of any account that has not a practical side to it ; in 
fact, that is not far more practical than theoretical. So noth- 
ing should be accepted, or sought for, except that which will 
surely elevate and inspire, as well as broaden and brighten 
one’s every-day life. If you are ot inspired and elevated, are 
not growing sweeter and better, suspect your Creed and hasten 
to correct it. Second—No Creed is of any account which has 
not an zntellectual side to it, and does not grow out of one’s 
jrst-handed investigations and convictions. ‘Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God, with all thy mznd, as well as soul 
and strength, is the first and great Command.” Therefore 
never repeat a Creed like a parrot, nor accept one without 
serious questioning, nor continue to accept it without unceas- 
ing inspection, and readiness to enlarge or improve. Third— 
In studying Comparative Religion adopt the Platonic test of 
an otherwise credible Belief ;—What the wzsest and best men 
have always and everywhere affirmed, on questions of The- 
ology and of Ethics, is likely to be true. Whatever is com- 
mon to the fundamental teachings of all the Great Religions 
may be gathered into a Creed of Mankind and accepted as 
Truth. This was the method of Jesus and this is Christian- 
ity. Hourth—That great and Divine Eclectic who was the 
founder of Christianity has left two Condensations of Divine 


RIN A OGL ACL hod le AT Ye 37 


Truth, of which all the rest of the Gospels and the Epistles 
of the New Testament are only elaborations—zamely, The 
Beatitudes, and the Two Commandments. These, like all 
the rest of his Divine Teachings, are Eclectic and (in other 
phrase) are common to all the Great Religions of the World. 
So, on the Platonic basis, as well as because they are self 
evident to what we may term the Universal Human Mind, 
they may be accepted as Truth. As such they may consti- 
tute a Creed with which all who seek to be pure in heart, 
and who hunger and thirst for righteousness, may at least 
start the inspiration and direction of their every-day lives. 
These Beatitudes and Commandments, however, need a con- 
stant study of the whole Christian Bible (of which they are 
only asummary) for their illumination and enforcement.— 
The Christian Bible expurgated and corrected we mean; for 
it—(like all other ancient books) is cumbered with much 
of traditional accumulation and débris, which Higher Criti- 
cism is now Providentially commissioned to remove. 

The expurgated and corrected Sacred Books of the other 
Great Religions of the World should also be studied ; not 
only because they so wondrously confirm all the essential 
teachings of the Christian Bible, but also, because they fur- 
nish those varied statements and beautiful illustrations of 
the Common Truth, which nothing can supply so well as 
Oriental Piety and Oriental Imagery combined. 


XXIV.—THE LIVING CREED AND PLEDGE. 


The Beatitudes and Two Commandments of Jesus, being 
accepted as the summary of the Christian Bible, and of all 
the other Bibles of the world, might (as they are found in the 
New Testament) be taken as the Common Creed of Man- 
kind. However, greater brevity and simplicity may be an 
advantage for ordinary concerted, and individual, use. 

In a recent volume of notable Sermons entitled The Mind 
of Christ, a well-known clergyman of Scotland has suggested 
such a simplified Creed joined to a Pledge of equal spirit 
and simplicity. Venturing to add two or three clauses to 


38 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


NDT RD eta raecrrneear cre ee ee ee OATES 


each, to change a few words, and to give a more Creed-like 
and Pledge-like form to both, they are here added, 


The Life Creed. 


I believe in the Fatherhood of God. 

I believe in the Teachings of Jesus, 

I believe in the Guidance of the Holy Spirit. 
I believe in the Clean Heart, 

I believe in the Service of Love. 

I believe in the Unworldly Life. 


The Life Pledge. 


I promise to trust God and love Him supremely. 

I promise to take my Cross and follow Christ. 

I promise to accept the Holy Spirit as my Guide. 
I promise to forgive and love my Enemies. 

I promise to love my Fellow Men as myself. 

I promise to hunger and thirst after Righteousness. 


XXV.—CHRISTIANITY THE SUPREME RELIGION. 


Thus far Christianity is Supreme. Spite of its many, 
great, and persistent degenerations : spite of the Com- 
mercial Spirit—inherited from Judaism,—of Priest-craft— 
common to all Religions,—of stupid Conservatism—the 
“block-head ” mystery prevailing everywhere ;—spite of all 
these reversions, and perversions, Christianity has proved 
itself superior to all the other Religions of the World. This 
superiority is evident from even the brief study of Compara- 
tive Religions that intelligent and unprejudiced scholars 
and observers have, up to date, been able to make. The 
comparative study of Sacred Books, of Literature drawn 
from or growing out of those Books, and of grades of ad- 
vancing or receding Civilization that may fairly be said to 
be essentially or inseparably connected with them—this is 
our field of observation and of judgment. Of the superior- 
ity which we claim there have been various notable op- 
portunities for public manifestation during the Christian 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 39 


Centuries; some of them, we confess, very unfavorably 
resulting, for Christianity—as, for instance, during all the 
Medieval Centuries, when the Scholarship, Morality, and 
higher Civilization of the world belonged, unquestionably, to 
Islamism in particular, and to Confucianism, Brahminism, and 
Parseeism in general. But, spite of these many centuries of 
decadence the partial renascence of Christianity, known as 
the Protestant Reformation, and the much more radical and 
complete one now in progress, together with the thriving 
scholarship, morality, and civilizing influences of the first 
three Christian centuries, have so combined to rescue the 
Divine Religion of Jesus from reversion and decay that, 
to-day, it stands before the world unquestionably supreme. 


XXVI.—THE WORLD’S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS. 


Without doubt the most notable manifestation of this 
superiority that has ever transpired was that known as The 
World’s Parliament of Religions, held in connection with 
the recent Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Not “three 
wise men from the Orient” only, but a large assembly of 
wise men—the wisest, the most saintly, the most noble, the 
best as we may truthfully call them—out of every civilized 
nation under heaven, representing every highest or more 
intelligent form and phase of religion, from every continent 
and corner of the earth, were there gathered together to 
witness—they knew not what at first! But in the end, as in 
the providence of God it proved, to witness the transcendent 
power of Christ’s personality, and the supreme glory of his 
religion, as compared with all the other personalities and 
religions of the world. Not as on that greatest of historic 
Epiphanies, the day of Pentecost, when those gathered were 
representatives only of various tribes, sects, and proselytes 
of the Jews scattered abroad among all the nations who had 
“come up to Jerusalem for to worship ’—this assembly was 
composed of representatives from all the great nationalities, 
and all the ancient as well as most recent religious faiths of 
the civilized world. 


40 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
SaIRSBREUERIpanranscitaracceeee ieee a ea 


This most remarkable manifestation is not only “most 
remarkable,” but is also bound to have most wide reaching, 
world illuminating, and history transforming results. 

After nineteen centuries of historic illumination, trans- 
formation, and evolution, what has the world to say about 
Christianity? Let us examine and answer this question in 
the light of the nineteenth century, as focused in the recent 
“World’s Parliament of Religions.” 

At the very beginning we are met by an objection thought 
by some to be unanswerable; an old objection and yet very 
new; an objection many times answered, and yet forever 
pressed upon us not only by Jews, Pagans, and Skeptics, 
but also by many honest enquirers among those who—in 
some sense—call themselves Christians. The objection is 
this: The claim of superiority is a claim that long has been 
and still is made with equal sincerity and emphasis by the 
devotees of all the other great religions of the world, Jew- 
ish, Persian, Buddhistic, Confucian, and Mohammedan—all 
say the same thing,—claim the same superiority. 

No doubt that all the representatives of the great re- 
ligions of the world, from the most ancient Hindoo and 
Parsee faiths to the most recent of the Protestant Christian 
sects, crossed seas and continents coming up to this World’s 
Parliament of Religions, each with this thought in his heart 
and this word on his tongue,—J/y Religion is supreme! In 
view of this fact there were many of “the most straitest 
sects’ of all these Religions (our own Christian Sects in- 
cluded) who doubted of the benefits, to say nothing of the 
reverence, of such a World’s Parliament of Religions. 
Others of the most liberal, or what one may better term 
“ free-thinking,” Sects concluded that the time had come 
(and the Parliament of Religions would settle it) when the 
indefinite article “a” should be substituted for the definite 
article “the”; so that all the claims would be right and 
none wrong—My Religion is @ Superior, not tke Superior 
Religion. This they thought should be done as a timely 
compromise, in the interests of universal peace and good 
will. It is time, they said, that we acknowledge the good 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 4I 


in all Religions—and not any longer set up one as true and 
try to pull down all the others as false. What is now 
demanded is an acknowledgment, on all hands, that there 
are “Lords many” and that all forms of Religions are 
equally authentic and divine; or better still perhaps that all 
put together make the True Religion—the Universal Re- 
ligion. 

A famous essayist of this free-thinking sort (Thomas 
Wentworth Higginson), in a well known essay entitled “The 
Sympathy of Religions,” has written this: “The main differ- 
ence between the various Religions of the World is, that 
each fills some blank space in its creed with the name of a 
different teacher. The Parsee, for instance, wears a pure 
white garment bound around with a certain knot; and 
whenever this knot is undone, at morning or night, he re- 
peats the four main parts of his creed, which are: ‘To 
believe in one God and hope for mercy from Him only; to 
believe in a future state of existence; to do as you would be 
done by.’ Thus he keeps on the universal ground of Re- 
ligion. Then he drops into the language of sectarianism 
and adds ‘to believe in Zoroaster as a supreme teacher.’ 
The creed [he continues] thus furnishes a formula for all 
Faiths. It might be printed in blank like a circular, leaving 
only the closing name to be filled in. For Zoroaster write 
Christ and you have Christianity; write Buddha and you 
have Buddhism; write Mohammed and you have Moham- 
medanism. Eachof these is true Religion plus an individual 
name. It is by insisting on this p/ws that each Religion 
stops short of being universal the World over.” So say all 
“free thinkers.” To claim that there is one Superior Re- 
ligion—that any one of the Religions is essentially superior 
to the others, is narrowness, sectarianism, bigotry. It is 
time, they say, for a Universal Religion, and a Universal 
Religion must be the residuum of all the great Religions of 
the World fused into one. This is what some thought the 
Parliament of Religions meant, or would come to mean. 
But it proved otherwise. Every representative was cor- 
dially received, and equal civilities and rights of speech were 


42 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

ae EO 
granted to all. They were simply invited to come and 
compare their Religions—not so much as to their original 
teachings as in their actual historic results. It thus became 
a study—a most interesting, important, and timely study—in 
Comparative Religion. It was indeed a World’s Exhibition 
of Religion—not of religious theories but religious results. 
What has your religion accomplished? Show us its superior 
fruits and we will then believe in its superior worth. 


XXVII.—THE AGE OF COMPARISON, AND ITS TEST. 


Happily we are now living in an age of the World in 
which the test, which Jesus himself gave, can be applied, 
and is being applied, in its most impartial and universal 
sense,—the test I mean, “By their fruits shall ye know 
them.” 

Our age is an age of Comparisons. All our World’s 
International and National Exhibitions are exhibitions of 
comparative values. All our literature and ever advancing 
civilization means a sifting of values and an exhibition of 
superior worth by means of the comparative method. Which 
of several pieces of machinery shall have the medal? Place 
them side by side and see how they work. Which of various 
theories of Political Economy, of National Government, of 
Science, of Sociology, of Ethics, is worthy of ultimate or of 
exclusive adoption? Place them side by side, compare their 
practical workings, and, after a reasonably prolonged and 
impartial witnessing of results, judge as to superiority. So 
the whole civilized World is doing to-day. We have entered 
upon the age and the ages of Comparisons. “ By their fruits 
shall ye know them.” 


This test is being applied, whether we know it or not, 
first of all, among the various denominations of our own 
Christianity. Men are beginning to look about them and 
inquire for the Christian body or name that can show, not 
the most, but the best fruit: not Antiquity, Creeds, Cathe- 
drals, Sum Totals, but real fruit—souls saved, characters 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 43 


regenerated, society uplifted, the world advanced. Man- 
kind, here and now, are beginning to listen to the teachings 
which are enunciated, not by the most oracular or pre- 
tentious theologians or ecclesiastics, but by those who are 
most like the Divine Master—simple, loving, and wise. The 
Christian World is beginning to believe not in the institu- 
tions which ¢a/k most, but in those which do most, and do 
it most effectively. Christian “orthodoxy” is no longer 
tested by creeds, but the creeds themselves are being tested 
by their results. Those interpretations of the Bible which 
are found to have the greatest power over—not the tongues 
or professions, but—the consciences and lives of men, are 
beginning to be received as the true interpretations, and 
that form of Christianity which, after the test of centuries, 
has shown its superior power to refine and elevate and 
purify, is being accepted—must henceforth be accepted—as 
superior. This is what is going on among the various Chris- 
tian communities. The same is the test, and the only real 
test of Christianity as against the other great Religions of 
the World. “ By their fruits shall ye know them.” 


XXVIII.—RELIGIONS JUDGED BY THEIR FRUITS. 


Christianity must stand or fall, must be ranked as superior 
or inferior—now after this lapse of nineteen centuries, sim- 
ply on the ground of comparative merit, or of relative worth. 
It is no longer—as it once was and doubtless had to be—a 
question of Antiquity, Prophecy, or Supernatural Sanctions, 
chiefly or exclusively. It is no longer a question, as it used 
to be, of Numerical Strength, or of Institutional Grandeur, 
or of Political Domain. All these are broken earthworks, 
decayed fortifications of the Past, which modern culture, 
and wisdom, and purity, and humanity are forcing us to 
abandon. The question of to-day and of the future is, not 
what are the Sanctions or Accessories of this or that religion, 
but what is it? What has it done? What is it doing and 
what does it promise to do? We as Christians will no 
longer permit other Religions to reckon up the Antiquity of 


44 KRENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. ; 
eet ce Nt ES oe 
their Faiths, figure up their Prophecies, add their Miracles, 
count their Adherents—as they have always been doing,— 
and thrust their sum-totals in our face, or in the faces of one 
another, as final evidences that they are superior or divine. 
We will no longer permit this. Neither must we permit 
ourselves to do the same to them. If we do, we shall con- 
tinue to find that almost every other great Religion can 
thrust back a sum-total of these very boasts or claims at 
least equal to our own; while infidels will meanwhile stand 
by and scoff to see us worsted with the weapons of our con- 
tinued choice. Neither may we claim, as some have claimed, 
that Divine Truth has been revealed ¢o us alone, in the sense 
that God has deigned to send Prophets to us only. For, 
studious research has already drawn forth many a golden 
treasure from those “rubbish heaps of superstition,”—the 
Sacred Books of the Ethnic Religions. Impartial criticism 
is more and more proving the truth of our own _ blessed 
Bible, that “ God is no respecter of persons,” and that He 
has “never left Himself without witness among any people, 
but has from time to time raised up prophets among them 
all such as they were able to hear.” 

None of these methods of the past are to be continued as 
the methods of to-day or of the future. Rather, now and 
hereafter, must be adopted the New Testament method— 
“ By their fruits shall ye know them.” Recognizing gladly 
all that is good, or beautiful, or true, in other Religions ; 
conceding to their great teachers all the authority which 
they can, rightfully, claim; we are to place them side by side 
with the Religion of Jesus; and, by witnessing their practical 
workings—their relative civilizing, regenerating, ennobling, 
and purifying influences and results—are thus to determine, 
in these “latter ages of the world,” which is the best Relig- 
ion, which is truest, and—as a reasonable inference—which is 
most divine. This henceforth is the only tenable as well as 
the only truly Biblical ground upon which we may base our 
claim for the great superiority of the Christian Religion. 
Prophecy, Miracles, Inspiration, Martyrdoms—all of these, 
as many and as great are claimed by the other Religions, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 45 


Of course we may believe that ours are true and theirs mis- 
taken or false. But however much we may Jdelzeve this, we 
have no adequate method of demonstrating it except by 
pointing to the unique, the transcendent power of Christian- 
ity, as seen in its incomparable triumphs, as a co-operating 
agency at least, in regenerating and civilizing the World. 
And now, for the first time in History, we are able to 
demonstrate this with a great and ever increasing power of 
demonstration. Till quite recently the Sacred Books of the 
various Religions of the World were sealed to our view. 
Within the past twenty-five years they have been unsealed and 
are now open to us all. Till now, too, the true history and 
the real progress of civilization among the so-called Pagan 
nations of the World has been hidden from us. Inaccessi- 
ble, shut in and shut out each from the other, and from all 
the rest of the World, how could they be known or how 
could any right comparison be instituted? But Christian 
Missions first, Christian Commerce second, Christian Educa- 
tion, Invention, and Enterprise third, have battered down all 
partition walls, have demanded and secured “ open sesame”’ 
to every corner of the world, have piled upon our book 
shelves and placed before our eyes the materials for an 
adequate and just comparison. China, India, Persia, and the 
Islands of the Sea, with their inhabitants, customs, institu- 
tions, laws, and grades of civilization—their past progress 
and future promises are now definitely placed before us. 
Railroad, and inter-oceanic and telegraphic and telephonic 
communication have made us next door neighbors to every 
tribe and people of the earth. Hence to all who read, 
study, and observe, with intelligence and candor, the Argu- 
ment from Comparisons has become cumulative. So over- 
whelmingly is it on the side of Christianity that it seems 
well-nigh absurd even to re-state the claim. This is what 
our World’s Exhibitions, held, every one of them, in 
Christian lands, originated and sustained by Christian intel- 
ligence, industry, and enterprise, have meant. Providentially 
they all have been Epiphanies of Christianity. Japan, 
China, India, Persia, Africa, and the Islands of the Sea have 


40 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


sent representatives to them who have returned—as did 
those sent in ancient times to spy out the Promised Land— 
bearing tokens substantial and convincing of the superiority 
of Christian institutions. From the last World’s Exposi- 
tion—grandest and best of all,—especially from that depart- 
ment of it known as the “ World’s Parliament of Religion,” 
returned many an intelligent, devout, and truth-loving 
delegate who exclaimed, as did the Queen of Sheba, return- 
ing from the court of Solomon, “ Behold the half was not 
told me.” 


XXIX.—UNPREJUDICED TESTIMONIES. 


And all this is not, as some of the scoffers might say, 
“American spread Eagleism” or “ nineteenth century brag”’ 
or the “partisan boastings of Christian bigotry.” As one of 
our prominent Christian ministers, heard and known all over 
the earth, has recently said, “It is the religion of Jesus that 
has abolished slavery, emancipated childhood, uplifted 
womanhood, and fought all battles for human freedom and 
the rights of man. All that distinguishes the workingman 
of America and Europe from the Chinese coolie, the Hindoo 
pariah, the Egyptian fellah, and the proletare of ancient 
Rome is due to Christianity. Christianity has promoted in- 
telligence, has been the mother of science, the nurse of art, 
the promoter of invention. Industry in its greatest sense— 
the industry of steam and electricity—which defies time and 
space, does not exist except in Christian lands.” 

Lest this should be called the “ special pleading” of inter- 
ested parties—of clergymen and others who are paid to say 
it—let us quote also the recent language of one who is not an 
ecclesiastic, nor a theologian, nor even an “orthodox” 
Christian,—one of our most distinguished American scien- 
tists, doctor of laws, professor of chemistry and mineralogy 
in Harvard University :— 

‘““As modern science dates from Newton, so all that is 
noblest and best in man, all that is most pure and lovely in 
life, all most unselfish morality, all most heroic chivalry, all 
most holy charity is dated Anno Domini. Looking at 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 47 


Christian Institutions simply as outward facts—without 
regard to sanctions of doctrines, dogmas or creeds of any sort 
—what do wesee? No less than this: that everything in the 
world that is loftiest and profoundest in thought, which is 
most ennobling and heroic in character, which is bravest and 
most unselfish in action, which is purest and loveliest in art, 
which is most consoling and hopeful in philosophy; and 
above all this, every form of most beneficent charity, every 
great movement for the amelioration of mankind, every in- 
fluence most sanctifying to family ties, dates from one con- 
spicuous and definite epoch of the world’s history from 
which civilized men began to count again the revolving 
years. Who can speak the matchless worth of Christianity.” 

These are fair and honest statements of the results, to date, 
of this science which is now widely known as the Science of 
Comparative Religion. But, lest this too should be consid- 
ered partisan, or be classed among the Exclusive Statements 
of Sectarian Religionists, let us add one of many statements 
from those who have been born and bred in other Religions. 
One of the distinguished delegates to the World’s Parliament 
of Religions in Chicago, a reformed Brahmin of India, after- 
wards made scores of addresses in various parts of this coun- 
try, every one of which was a fervent eulogy of Christianity. 
His favorite quotation was that of his great fellow reformer 
of India: ‘‘ How we wish that Jesus had been born in India! 
We should have devoted an epic to his glory, sung his name 
through every city and village, comforted the weak in their 
sorrows and the dying on their death beds with his holy 
words, remembered him in every act of daily life, and died 
finding consolation and strength in his blessed example. 
We wish indeed that Jesus had been born in India.” 


XXX.—THE VERDICT. 


So it is that even the chief representatives of so-called 
Pagan Religions are joining in the testimony; are coming to 
acknowledge not only that Christian civilization is supreme, 
but also that it is verily the personality of Jesus and the 
promulgation of his gospel upon which, asa chief corner- 


48 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


stone, Christian Civilization is built. The great masses of 
truth lovers and truth seekers, impressed with the supreme 
majesty and dignity of Jesus, convinced of his superior 
wisdom, authority, purity and grace, have taken his Gospel 
—the Gospel of the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of 
Man, the Forgiveness of Sins and the Immortal Hope—and, 
upon this for nineteen Centuries have been building, and 
building “better than they knew,” a great kingdom of light, 
and love, and humanity.» They have proclaimed the teach- 
ings of Jesus, perpetuated his memory, immortalized his 
deeds, and exalted his example; so that now, more than 
ever, he stands out in glory, with all the world wondering 
before him. They have taken the name of Jesus, “name 
of wondrous love, name all other names above,” and crying 
out “All hail to its power,” have been singing all through 
the centuries—and to-day with a louder, fuller, sweeter voice 
than ever: a voice heard in millions of temples all over the 
earth, yes, in every corner of every continent and in every 
habitable island of the sea—are singing the old hymn, the 
one united, unbroken Hymn of Christendom, we may call it: 


‘‘ Jesus shall reign where’er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run ; 
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, 
Till moons shall wax and wane no more. 


‘“ To him shall endless prayer be made, 
And praises throng to crown his head ; 
His name like sweet perfume shall rise 
With every morning sacrifice. 


““ People and realms of every tongue 
Dwell on his love with sweetest song ; 
And infant voices shall proclaim 
This early blessing on his name. 


““ Blessings abound where’er he reigns ; 
The prisoner leaps to burst his chains, 
The weary find eternal rest, 

And all the sons of want are blest. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 49 
eee 


‘’ Let every creature rise, and bring 
Peculiar honours to our King: 
Angels descend with songs again, 
And earth repeat the loud Amen.” 


XXXI.—NOTWITHSTANDING. 


All this 2 spite of the many, great, and persistent Degen- 
erations with which genuzne Christianity has been cumbered ; 
and by which, from the Second Century zucreasingly until 
now, its progress has been impeded! What then must have 
been the inherent, latent, as yet largely undeveloped and 
widely misapprehended power of original Christianity! 
What it was may be inferred from what it accomplished 
as a world-conquering, world-regenerating Religion, “ pure 
and undefiled before God and man” during the First 
Century. What it zs, may be, and shall be, may be gathered 
from the title of this volume, Renascent Christianity— 
Christianity springing up anew. Had original Christianity 
escaped the universally prevailing law of Tendency to 
Revert, had it remained pure and uncorrupted, as it issued 
from the lips and life of its Divine Founder! verily, verily, 
his Holy Dream, and that of all his Apostles and first 
zealous followers, would have actually been accomplished— 
the Kingdom of God would have come and His Will would 
have been done, on Earth as in Heaven, long before the 
Nicene and Athanasian Creeds were imposed as yokes and 
goads upon the degenerate Christians of the degenerate 
Christian Church! And now, should Christianity become 
truly renascent—springing up again as it did in the First 
Century, and so continuing—verily, verily, the long dreamed 
of Millennium would actually be here before the close of the 
Twentieth Century! 

“Even so, Jesus Master, come quickly!” “Repent, Pre- 
pare the Way ’’—so shall the “Kingdom of Heaven” verily 
be “at hand.” 


50 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


XXXII.—WHAT THEN IS CHRISTIANITY ? 


What then zs Christianity ? Why is it, as we have shown, 
essentially superior? In all truthfulness we are reminded that 
it “‘ was inferior during several Medieval Centuries.” We are 
also told that it only-Lappens to be at the top now: and why 
may it not again revert to Heathenism so completely as to 
become inferior again to one or more of the Pagan Religions? 
We answer—This sad Reversion may indeed take place again, 
and repeatedly. There will doubtless come yet many fall- 
ings away as Jesus and his chief Apostles repeatedly pre- 
dicted. But “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” 
Simply because Christianity is “Truth” in a broader, as well 
as purer, and higher form than is found in any of the other 
forms of Religion, therefore has it been—as in the Protestant 
Reformation—still more now is, in the present Reformation, 
and promises more and more to be as Scholarship, Culture, 
and Civilization increase—a ceaselessly renascent Religion. 

But why és it a “ broader, purer, and higher form of Truth’’? 
Simply because it was in the beginning, is now, and ever 
must be an Eclectic Religion—and the only one of the Great 
Religions that was, is, or can be eclectic. This claim has 
been made and substantiated in a previous section, and so 
need not be further considered here. As an Eclectic Re- 
ligion it st#/Z as at first, and forever as now, claims, takes 
possession of, and appropriates as its own, all Truth wher- 
ever found. 

Thus it is that the Spiritual Fruitage of all the Ages, the 
genuine Inspirations and Products of the Holy Ghost every- 
where and always, “‘ world without end,” belong to genuine 
Christianity. If those who call themselves Christians will 
only recognize this and permit renascent Christianity to 
claim and appropriate its own, then will it soon become and 
to the end continue, in fact as in name, The One Holy 
Catholic and Apostolical Religion of Mankind. 


XXXIII.—SACRED SCRIPTURES OF THE WORLD—MODERN 
AS WELL AS ANCIENT. 


Christianity as an Eclectic Religion, as the only Eclectic 
Religion, still as at first, and forever as now, claims, takes 


KENASCEN I VGHRISTIANIEY, 51 

f LPP TRAITS 25) Fa hills Weave lie RB ae RR 

possession of, and appropriates as its own, a// Truth wher. 

ever found. AAs such, its “Bible” is comprehensive and 

enlarges itself, ever and ever, to take in “all Truth wherever 

found.” Hence it has, and must have, its Sacred Scriptures 
“new and old —modern as well as ancient. 

The word Scriptures means, of course, Writings, or Things 
Written. The word Sacred means venerated, highly valued, 
or held in highest esteem. “Sacred Scriptures of the 
World” then, as a title, means those writings of the world 
which are or are worthy to be venerated, highly valued, or 
held in highest esteem. In a lower sense all writings which 
contain any Truth or Beauty are Sacred Scriptures. But, 
by common consent of all people and ages, the word Sacred 
is reserved for writings which bear on highest Truth and 
Beauty—which universally are recognized as those only 
which relate to Religion and Ethics; or to Piety and 
Morals. So, in any Collection of Sacred Scriptures of the 
World, nothing can be wisely included but such writings as 
relate to the Supreme Being and to Mankind in their nature 
and relations. 

Such writings however are modern as well as ancient. 
It is a serious practical error as well as an outgrown super- 
stition to suppose “a deposit” of Sacred Truth and Beauty 
made in ancient times once for all, and never to be added 
to, repeated, newly adapted, or changed. “The faith once 
delivered to the Saints” has been delivered not once only, 
but countless times—indeed, unceasingly, and increasingly, 
as the ages have gone by. Possibly there have not been so 
many “ Saints ""—that is, persons of such high attainments 
in Holiness—in some of the modern as in some of the ancient 
ages, through whom the Holy Communications could fit- 
tingly be delivered, but in all the ages there have been 
some. “ God hath zever left Himself without witness.” In 
these latter ages there have unquestionably been those of 
equal attainments in Holiness, and of vastly wider and more 
profound intelligence. Through these has been “ delivered” 
to the World that deeper Truth and higher Beauty of which 
he prophesied who said to his disciples, “I have many things 
to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when 


52 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


He, the Spirit of Truth, is come He will guide you into all 
Abartaal’ 

It is high time then that we should have not only a 
volume, but volume upon volume, of recognized and so 
designated modern~Sacred Scriptures of the World. The 
crowing intelligence, the lessening superstitions and narrow- 
ness of the world, as well as its more widely-prevailing and 
perfectly-balanced saintliness, demand, more and more, such 
a recognition and such a designation. As a response to this 
evident demand a volume has recently been collected and 
edited, and will be duly issued under the title, Wodern Sacred 
Scriptures of the World. The same editor has previously 
collected and published a companion volume under the title, 
Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World. 


XXXIV.—MODERN SACRED SCRIPTURES. 


No especial merit is claimed by the compiler and editor 
of this volume soon to be issued for his share in the work. 
Out of several volumes of his own manuscript notes entitled 
“Quotations and Thoughts’’—accumulated during forty 
years of reading and meditation—he has simply selected such 
brief, pointed, and luminous portions as seemed to him best 
fitted to be called “‘Sacred” Scripture and best adapted to 
make up asingle volume. This volume he has called by a 
new name indeed; many of its arrangements and some of 
its contents are also new; but otherwise it claims no merit 
above that of other Selections and Anthologies which have 
—in less methodical ways—sought to condense the Religious 
and Ethical Literature of Modern Times into a single volume 
for devotional and practical purposes. 

Had all been included which the editor has accumulated 
under the title of “Quotations and Thoughts” during his. 
many years as student, theologian, and clergyman—all of 
which he highly values as quickening to his own private as- 
pirations and resolves—not one volume only, but three or 
more, would have been offered to the publishers as a result. 
This accumulation, however, is but a fraction of what might 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 53 


be gathered—of equal, and in some cases doubtless of still 
higher value—from the vast bulk of Sacred Writings both in 
Poetry and Prose, which holy men and women have “ in 
these last days” produced. Thus may be indicated what 
inexhaustible treasures remain for succeeding editors to draw 
from ;—to say nothing of those “ deposits”? which shall un- 
ceasingly be made, as the future centuries and generations 
shall come and go. The volume referred to is but the 
gathering of a few pebbles from the sea-shore. The xovelty 
of its title and method may be a beginning of those days 
when wise men shall not only realize for themselves—as an 
esoteric treasure—but also boldly teach to the world, that 
Divine Revelations have never ceased ; that wherever a holy 
soul is found there is an Oracle of God; and that ‘“ Sacred 
Scriptures of the World”’ include everything, in all writings, 
that are genuinely “true and beautiful and good.” 


XXXV.—ALL SACRED SCRIPTURES ARE ANONYMOUS. 


Besides the xovelty of the title and of the general method 
of the volume to be known as Modern Sacred Scriptures, 
the editor has ventured upon another—which in the Arthnzc 
Scriptures of the previous volume he also adopted—that of 
withholding all names of those who are, or are reported to 
be, authors of the various Quotations and Thoughts. This 
is a novelty indeed so far as Modern Literature is concerned. 
Among the ancients, to be, and to remain axonymous was 
highest genius and most beautiful humility combined. He 
who forbade his disciples to make him known, charging 
them, again and again, “ See that thou tell no man”; who 
consented to leave no record of his deeds or words, except 
in the characters and memories of those with whom he lived 
and to whom he spoke; who provided for no such record, 
except as it might spring forth as inspiration from the lips 
and pens of others after he should disappear; even instruct- 
ing his disciples—as he doubtless did—to forbear adding 
their own names as biographers or as authors, so that nearly 
all the New Testament writings remain to this day as practi- 


54 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


cally anonymous: thus is he, the Supreme Man, here as else- 
where, our supreme authority and example. How surprising 
that those who call themselves his followers have—in these 
modern times—so rarely been willing, in this regard as in 
many others, to obey his authority or to follow his example! 
The author of that ‘“‘ Second Bible,” commonly known as the 
Dramas of Shakespeare, is one of a very few who, in recent 
centuries, has sought, like his Divine Master and his Dis- 
ciples, to hide himself behind his words so that the world 
might not consider zm, but only the Truth and Beauty his 
words are designed to reveal. But the time is approaching, 
or rather, is reapproaching, when all Highest Thoughts and 
Deeds shall be, and remain, anonymous. The lower—that is 
“profane” or secular—thoughts and deeds doubtless need 
the backing of their author’s name, in order to make them 
comprehensible or authoritative. Their authors, too, need 
the glamour and glitter of notoriety, in order to feel ade- 
guately compensated for their effort or toil. But highest 
Truth and Beauty, which alone are worthy to be called 
“Sacred,” are—like axioms and intuitions—self-evident. As 
such ¢hey need no backing of an author’s name; and ¢heir 
authors, like themselves, are too lofty to need or to accept, 
as compensation, the glamour and glitter of notoriety. 


“Things done are won ; 
Love’s joy lies in the doing.” 


XXXVI.—HIDING SELF BEHIND TRUTH. 


To apprehend Truth in somewhat of its highest Grace 
and Beauty, and to be privileged to disclose somewhat of 
that apprehension to the World—this, aud nothing else, is 
what all loftiest souls desire. Attaining this, they seek for, 


ask for,no other reward. “I say unto you, rejoice, not that 
the spirits are subject unto you; but, rejoice rather, that 
your names are written in Heaven.” Divine approval, 


not human; God’s praises, not the praises of men; eternal 
attainments and accomplishments, not temporal commend- 
ations and rewards, is what all holiest and highest souls 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 55 


desire, and seek. Over this ¢hey rejoice, and over this only. 
In the Old Scriptures it is written God buried Moses so 
that no man knoweth of his sepulchre to this day. In like 
manner has God buried all who have been His accepted 
prophets. God’s highest mediums of communication with 
mankind have always been tucognitus: who exactly they 
were no man knows “‘to this day.” Theauthorship of nearly 
every book of the Bible, as well as of the other most Sacred 
Scriptures of the World has been contested ; and even when 
the zame of the author has been conceded, the author him- 
self, in all the details of his personality, remains to this day 
practically unknown. So should it be! ‘Tis the Divine 
Method—the Method of Grace as well as of Genius! Why 
obscure self-evident Truth and Beauty with the shadow of 
an author’s name? an author who, at his best, is only a 
mouth-piece or a medium. It is a hindrance, and an im- 
pertinence besides. There is but ove Author—the Supreme 
Wisdom and Love. Him alone should men consider and 
adore. Better far will it be when the names of Moses, 
David, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, 
Apollos, Homer, Zoroaster, Confucius, Gautama, and the 
whole line of Sacred Writers, down to “ Shakespeare and 
Bacon,” and the geniuses and saints of to-day, are entirely 
forgotten as authors, so that God, the Outshining Central 
Sun “ may be all in all.” Then will men no longer enquire 
for Authors in order to do them homage, but only for Truth 
and Beauty in order to adore them, and be themselves trans- 
formed into their “image and likeness.”’ 

‘‘ Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh ; 
yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now 
henceforth know we him no more.” “ And when all things 
shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also himself 
be subject unto Him that put all things under him, that God 
may be all in all.” 

Of a stately Temple or an artistic Palace it may gratify 
idle curiosity to know who was the architect, or who is the 
owner. But only those who appreciate least, stop to ask or 
require to know this. The stateliness of the Temple, the 


56 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ee 


beauty of the Palace speak for themselves to all most intel- 
ligent observers; and so lost are ¢hey in study and admira- 
tion of these, that mere curiosity as to architect’s or owner’s 
name finds no place in them. The watch, not the watch- 
maker; the machine, not the mechanic; the statue, the 
painting, the invention, the self-evident theory, the demon- 
strated problem, the luminous saying, the convincing propo- 
sition, the irresistible book—not the artist’s, inventor’s, 
student’s, or writer’s name, is what the Higher Intelligence 
of this and of all coming ages will, zxcreasingly, call for. 


“Proverbs are sayings without an author.” 
“ The originals are not original.” 


“ For neither now nor yesterday began 
These thoughts, which have been ever, nor yet can 
A man be found who thetr first entrance knew.” 


XXXVII.—THE RESURRECTED JESUS. 


“Behold, there was a great earthquake; for the angel of 
the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back 
the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance 
was like lightning, and his raiment was white as snow: and 
for fear of him the keepers did shake and become as dead 
men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, 
Fear not ye; for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was cruci- 
fied. He ts not here, for he ts risen, as he said. Go quickly 
and tell his disciples that he zs risen from the dead. And 
they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and creat 
joy ; and did run to dring his disciples word. 

“And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All 
authority is committed unto me in heaven and on earth. 
Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them into 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you. And lo, lam with you always, even 
unto the end of the world. Amen.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. oF 


XXXVITI.—NEW MEANING OF OLD DOGMAS AND CREEDS. 


Among “orthodox” Christians there are in common use 
now—as there have been since the fourth century—certain 
doctrinal words and phrases, which demand adjustment to 
Renascent Christianity and to the new interpretations of the 
Bible known as Higher Criticism. The volumes prepared by 
the writer, entitled Anczent Sacred Scriptures of the World, 
and Modern Sacred Scriptures of the World, are both pre- 
pared in the interests of Renascent Christianity and of 
Higher Criticism of the Bible. Any readers of those 
volumes, and all students of the Bible and of other Sacred 
Books of the World, will be much assisted by any reason- 
ably intelligent and reverent attempt to vevitalize—if not to 
reconstruct—the Dogmas and Creeds which are yet in com- 
mon use. The following attempt is certainly made ina 
“reverent ”’ spirit. He who makes it believes himself to be 
“reasonably intelligent’ with reference to the subject in 
hand. He hopes that it may, dy zts very tnadequacy tf for 
no other cause, be the means of stimulating other attempts 
and many; until finally “new bottles” shall be fit¢zngly pre- 
pared for the “new wine,” and “new cloth for the new 
garment.” 


“In vain I turned, in weary quest, 
Old pages, where—God give them rest !— 
The poor Creed-mongers dreamed and guessed, 
And still I prayed, ‘ Lord, let me see 
How Three are One, and One is Three! 
Read the dark riddle unto me!’ 


“ Then something whispered, ‘ Do’st thou pray 
For what thou hast? This very day 
The Holy Three have crossed thy way. 
Do not the gifts of sun and air 
To good and ill alike, declare 
The all-compassionate Father’s care? 
In the white soul that stoops to raise 
A lost soul from its evil ways, 


58 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Thou seest the Son, whom angels praise ! 
The still small voice that spoke to thee— 
The bodiless Divinity— 

Is the Holy Spirit’s mystery ! 


“In Love, and Sacrifice, and Grace, 
The Zrinity stands before thy face ! 
’T is thus in this and every place,— 
The Father, seen in rain and sun: 
The Christ, in good for evil done: 
The Voice Within,—the Three are One!’ 


“IT shut my Book of Doctrines fast— 
The monkish gloss of ages past :— 
The Schoolman’s Creeds aside I cast : 
And my eart answered——Lord I see 
How Three are One and One is Three! 
The riddle hath been read to me.” 


XXXIX.—QUESTIONS OF CRITICISM AND THEIR ANSWERS. 


The author, in penning this section in particular, is certain 
that he will meet with violent outcries from the traditionally 
“orthodox.” From those sofeless ones, especially, belonging 
to that class of ‘scribes and pharisees’’ who exclaimed to 
Jesus, “‘ Art thou greater than our father Abraham? Whom 
makest thou thyself ?’’—these violent outcries are certain to 
come. The old reply of Jesus and of all the prophets must 
be returned ¢o them :— 

““This people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are 
dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any 
time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their 
ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be 
converted, and I should heal them.”’ 

But to open-eyed, opened-eared, open-hearted objectors 
and enquirers the following questions with their answers are 
submitted : 

First Question—Are you not opening yourself to the 
charge of ‘‘ Heresy”? Answer.—There are no terrors in 
this charge, as it has been a familiar one to the author from 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 59 


College and Theological Seminary days. ‘“ After the way 
which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers ” 
for these thirty years past. 

Second Question.—But are you not reviving “ancient here- 
sies’’ which were long ago and repeatedly condemned? 
Answer.—Yes; but it is always in order ‘‘ to move a recon- 
sideration.” 

Third Question.—But are you not disregarding the injunc- 
tion of Jesus, ‘“ Put not new wine into old bottles. Sew 
not new cloth upon an old garment”? Axswer.— Tempo- 
rary expedtents are always allowable, and sometimes are 
advisable. Till the new bottles are made, it is wise to tie 
up the old “ wine-skins ” as best one can; till the new gar- 
ments are patterned and prepared, it is necessary to patch 
up the old. This, however, not as a finality, but only asa 
makeshift. 

Jesus himself and his apostles used nearly all of the out- 
worn forms, formularies, and symbols of the Jews with az 
entirely new meaning. For three centuries the ‘orthodox ” 
party, with their Fudatzings as to circumcision, bloody-sac- 
rifices, priestly-successions, temple-worship, and other such 
‘“essentials’’ and ‘“ essential meanings,” was overwhelmingly 
uppermost in the Christian Church. St. Paul fought an almost 
single-handed battle with them throughout his entire life ; 
insisting upon using the old forms, formularies, and symbols 
in a new and rational way. After his death, St. Paul’s suc- 
cessors of like spirit and method rapidly increased and 
finally prevailed. Then, but not till then, the new wine 
was put into new bottles; the new garments were made out 
of new cloth. The same was the case at the time of the 
Protestant Reformation,—that beginning of the Renascence 
of Christianity. Two centuries before Luther, individual 
priests and saintly scholars began to use, and to insist upon 
using, old forms, formularies, and symbols, with meanings 
entirely new. Till Protestantism was a fact, organized and 
established, this rational use of irrational rituals, creeds, and 
sacraments was persisted in dy individuals ; till, at length, 
the various corporate bodies of Protestantism were com- 


60 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


pelled to accept the rational meanings and adopt new forms 
of ritual, creeds, and sacraments appropriate to them. So 
has it been ever, and everywhere, and in all classes of 
reforms. Never an adrupt transit from the old to the new; 
but gradual changes—first in the spirit, then in the letter. 
Not revolution but reform is the meaning of Renascent 
Christianity ; Christianity springing up into renewed life, 
and the renewed life, in due time, assuming its appropriate 
forms—vre-forming itself. In this view of the matter our 
next question may be very briefly answered. 

Fourth Question.—Are you not inconsistent—indeed, a sort 
of hypocrite—to remain officially, or even nominally, con- 
nected with a religious body which almost unanimously 
adheres to the old spirit as well as letter of its beliefs? Ax- 
swer.—Reform comes never except through the agency of 
self-consecrated, self-forgetting reformers, who are zuside 
the needing-to-be-reformed religious body; and who insist 
upon the right to remain inside, as long as free interpreta- 
tion and free speech are granted them. ‘Give mea platform 
upon which to stand, and I will shake the world,” said 
Archimedes. But there is no platform given—in the pres- 
ent life—except zmszde the world. When we are driven out, 
then—of course we must go! 

fifth Question.—But why not wait for councils, conven- 
tions, or authorized committees, of the great religious bodies 
to do the “tying-up”’ and the “patching,” if they so much 
need to be doner “By what authority doest thou these 
things?” Answer.—One of the best known, most scholarly, 
most saintly, and venerable of the clergymen of America 
has recently given a reply to this always and everywhere 
proffered question—proffered especially by the “scribes and 
pharisees, hypocrites,” who always “urge it vehemently.” 

“Always there is the same danger when you trust to 
priests and Levites instead of bidding every man testify for 
the truth. The priest goes on his side of the way on his 
decorous journey. The Levite goes on his. It is the out- 
side Samaritan who listens to the voice of God. The Mor- 
mon Church of yesterday, or the Roman Catholic Church of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 61 


the dark ages or any of its little Protestant imitators, are all 
in the same condemnation. From the nature of the case 
they look backward and despise the word of prophecy. 
Most dangerous, as I believe, to liberty of conscience is a com- 
pact organization where wealth, and dignity, and prestige, 
combine to insist that Middle Age dogmas shall be clamped 
over the mouth of the preachers of to-day,—men who have 
been taught by Hamilton and Le Conte, Darwin and Agassiz, 
Maurice and Robertson, Martineau and Stanley, Channing, 
Emerson, and Brooks.” 

To which we add :—In Religion as elsewhere, the Indi- 
vidual has rights as well as Corporations ; among which is 
the right of Free Conscience and Free Speech. For sixteen 
centuries the autocratic Church and Churches have tried to 
suppress this right; but in these enlightened days, and in 
this enlightened land especially, “‘ Ecclesiastical Authorities” 
can no longer be slave-holders or slave-drivers. ‘‘The word 
of God is not bound” any longer. Emancipation of thought 
and tongue has been proclaimed in Church as in State. 
Slave-holders and slave-drivers, in remote and degraded 
communities and ‘‘communions,”’ still resist; and there are 
many of the newly manumitted who cravenly hug their 
broken chains and, slave-like, dare not speak as the Spirit 
seeketh to give them utterance. Notwithstanding, to all 
who are willing to be freemen, the Declaration of Spiritual 
Independence is an accomplished fact forever. Original 
Christianity was this Declaration; through eighteen cen- 
turies of warfare it has been contested ; Protestantism was 
its first signal victory; Renascent Christianity is, and will be, 
its complete achievement and permanent establishment. 
‘“‘ Brethren, ye have been called unto Liberty . . . Stand 
fast therefore in the Liberty wherewith Christ has made you 
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. 
: For where the Spirit of the Lord is there is 
Liberty. . ... The glorious Liberty of the children of 
God.” 

All Reform is a return to, or foward, First Principles. 
This has never been secured, in the History of any Religion, 


62 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
er neem ANN -Late nae aS EC UE CREA CREA 


except by individual ¢s7stency—supplemented, often, by the 
persistency of combined Protesters, or of organized Dissent- 
ers, who have been conscience-compelled or persecution- 
compelled to combine or to organize. 

In one of a series of Advent Sermons, just now being 
preached in St. Paul’s Church, New York City, the scholarly 
and bold preacher has drawn bitter criticism, and the pour- 
ing out of vials of wrath upon himself, by venturing to Say 
many things that a Prophet-Priest ought to say in rebuke of 
common opinion and practice. Among the more notable of 
them is the following :—“ Never yet have the Officials or 
the Authorized Leaders among the people recognized the 
signs of the times.” This is a great fact of Universal His- 
tory—in Religion move than in other things, in Church more 
than in State. Who have been the Reformers and true 
Builders-up of Religion in all ages? Not the High-Priests, 
who belonged to the Aaronic Succession; nor the Scribes 
and Rabbis who sat in Moses’ Seat; not Popes, Cardinals, 
Arch-Bishops, Bishops, nor well-paid Professors in Theology, 
nor popular Doctors of Divinity. But mocked Elijahs, men- 
of-sorrow-and-acquainted-with.grief Isaiahs, despised - and -re- 
Jected-of-men Jeremiahs, unauthorized John the Baptists, the 
unordained Jesus, non-commissioned Sauls of Tarsus, anathe- 
matized Monks of Erfurt, and Prophet-Priests of like Spirit ; 
ordained and approved of God, though not of man—these 
everywhere and ever, have been the Reformers and true 
Builders-up of Religion. 

From Moses and all the Old Testament prophets down to 
Jesus and Paul, and from these down to Luther and to-day ; 
in Judaism, in Christianity, and in every other form of Re- 
ligion, it has been the Individual—never the Council, Con- 
vention, or Authorized Committee—that has “turned the 
World upside down ” in its Errors and Wrongs, and ushered 
in all the new Light and Life that have ever come to Man- 
kind. It isnot Egotism, nor presumption—as commonly 
affirmed—to be true to one’s convictions. Every commtis- 
stoned teacher, especially, should speak the Truth as God 
has revealed it to him by His Holy Spirit—and “ speak it 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 63 


boldly as he ought to speak.” One’s light, even if it be but 
the light of a farthing candle, is not his own; and he is 
bound to put it “not under a bushel, but on a candle- 
stick.” Never yet has the Holy Ghost spoken through 
Council, Convention, Committee, or Church until it first 
had spoken in the “still small voice”’ to Individuals who, 
like Elijah and Paul, were “ not disobedient to the heavenly 
vision.” No one is so small or humble—be he truly sincere, 
pure-hearted, and devout—but that the Spirit of Truth will 
speak to him; and not an accent should be lost. ‘“ What 
ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.”’ 

Such are some of the main reasons why no Prophet-Priest, 
however humble his name or station, should dare await the 
cumbrous, tedious, and uncertain action of Ecclesiastical 
Officialsk—however much esteemed and revered—before 
giving, to whomsoever will receive it, whatever new Light 
has clearly shined into his soul through the agency of that 
Spirit of God, which “lighteth every man that cometh into 
the world.” 

Sixth Question.—But why continue the use, at least, of 
such Un-Scriptural terms as The Trinity; and of such Un- 
Apostolic formularies as The Nicene Creed; and of much 
of the language common to both the written and extempo- 
raneous Devotions of “Orthodox” Christians—the medieval 
and modern meaning of which is so wrdely different from 
that which you, and multitudes of others, now believe ; 
and which—as you claim—neither Jesus nor any of the 
more spiritual and intelligent Christians of the first two 
centuries believed? Answer—By analogy, an answer is 
furnished us in recent words of a celebrated American 
Physician, who, in a profound book on Pathology, has 
defended himself for the use of ancient medical terms— 
which have long since ceased to have their original mean- 
ing—as follows: ‘“ Nearly all our Medical Terminology ex- 
presses our ignorance, more than our knowledge. Despite 
all our progress in Medical Science we are yet obliged to 
retain old terms, which are very inadequate, for even our 
best known diseases. But, provided we understand what they 


64 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


mean now and to us, there is no serious objection to their 
use. Indeed, their retention is a matter of necessity, until 
such a time as the fuller nature of the various diseases shall 
be unveiled ; then, these old and largely meaningless terms 
can be, and will be, gradually abandoned.” 

Exactly so we say of Theological Terminology. Such 
terms as The Trinity, such Creeds as The Nicene, and such 
dogmatic or symbolic words as those so much and widely 
used in ‘‘Orthodox” Instruction as well as Devotion, 
express “ignorance more than knowledge.’ Despite all 
our progress we are “yet obliged to retain them”’ al- 
though “very inadequate ” to convey our higher meanings. 
As we seek—not Revolution but—Ae-form, we must retain 
them until our own knowledge, and also the knowledge of 
those whom we are called upon to guide and instruct, is more 
complete. There is no serious objection to this ‘“‘ provided 
we understand,” and also ¢ry to make those whom we guide 
and teach understand, “what they mean now, and to us.” 
In this sense their retention is allowable, and perhaps essen- 
tial, “until such a time as the fuller nature” and meaning 
of Theological Truth “shall be unveiled.” Then, “these 
old and largely meaningless terms can be, and will be, evadu- 
ally abandoned.” 


XL.—AN ATTEMPT AT REASONABLE EXPLANATION. 
1.— Trinity. 

The Trinity is a common and helpful phrase wherewith 
to designate those Historic Manifestations of the Divine 
Being which are known as Fatherhood, Sonship, and In- 
spiration. Fatherhood is God seen in Creation; Sonship is 
God recognized in Man; Inspiration is God enthroned in 
the Soul. Looking upward to the Universe we behold God 
the Father; looking about to Mankind we behold God the 
Son; looking within to Spiritual Holiness we behold God 
the Holy Ghost. Aznd these Three are One.* 


* NOTE. 


The word Trinity, in its original, means, any three-fold manifestation—as 
the length, breadth, and height of a cube; all are equal and all are aspects of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 65 
ee eee EN rc Ry NE OND Le er LANL ARCN INE EP LAI VE AUS 
2.— Christ. 


The word Christ is a Greek form of the Hebrew word 
Messias, which means anointed, that is, set apart or conse- 
crated. Priests, Judges, Kings, Rulers, Officials of any 
sort, who were anointed, set apart, or consecrated, were 
called Messias in the Old Testament Scriptures—which is, 
being interpreted, Christ. 


3.—Fesus Christ. 


Jesus Christ is he who—living in Judea nineteen hundred 
years ago—set himself apart or consecrated himself xure- 
servedly to God for the Service of Mankind. To signify 
this he called himself, and allowed himself to be called, 
Messias, or Christ. 


4.— Fesus the Christ. 


Because Jesus was the first, and zs the only one, of men 
who has wureservedly consecrated himself to God for the 


Service of Mankind, he is called, and deserves to be called, 
The Christ. 


5.—Christians. 


Christians are those who, like Jesus, consecrate themselves 
to God for the Service of Mankind. Strictly speaking, no one 
has a right to the name who has not so consecrated himself. 
Whoever is so consecrated, wheresoever found, is a Christian. 
And those who are the most unreservedly consecrated are 
most truly Christians. 


one thing. As a figure, or as a means of apprehension, its use is helpful and 
allowable. But as the Dogma of a Triad, or of an Actual Tri-Personality of 
Divine Being, it is a degradation both of thought and theology. This Dogma 
is found as a teaching in the Sacred Books of all the Ancient Pagan Religions 
(except in the Koran of Islamism), but is not so much as hinted in the Bible— 
except by impossible and far-fetched inferences. The one passage which has 
long been quoted as a proof-text, that of the Three Witnesses, has always been 
considered spurious ; and is now rejected as such by the Revised New Testa- 
ment. The dogma of Tri-Personality came from the Pagan Religions and 
(most unfortunately) was adopted by Christianity during its ‘‘ Philosophical 
Period” of the 3d, 4th, and 5th Centuries. 
5 


66 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


nani i Si OL Rae Ee ae a ee = A SaaS OAR 


6.—Salvation by Christ. 


As Christ means Messias, or Anointed, or set apart, or 
consecrated, “Salvation by Christ’? means the same as does 
the term Christian—Consecrated to God for the Service of 
Mankind. All who are so consecrated are being saved. All 
who are not so consecrated are being lost. In proportion 
as one is unreservedly consecrated he zs saved. In pro- 
portion as one is mot at all consecrated he zs lost. Such is 
Salvation always and everywhere. And there is no other 
way. There is none other name given on Earth, or in 
Heaven, whereby we must be.saved but ‘‘ Christ,’ that ‘1s, 
Consecration. 


7.— Fesus Christ as the Saviour. 


Jesus was the first of the Holy Teachers of the World 
who clearly taught, and personally illustrated, this way of 
salvation; therefore he, above all, is Saviour. As he was 
and is the only Saviour who unreservedly consecrated him- 
self to God for the Service of Mankind, therefore is he 
worthy to be called “ The Saviour.” 


8.—Son of God. 


A son of God is one who, having consecrated himself to 
God for the Service of Mankind, is accepted into that high 
approval and relationship which belongs to a son. The 
consecration to God is called being “ born” of God, and the 
acceptance is called “adoption.” Strictly speaking, none 
but those who have consecrated themselves to God for the 
Service of Mankind are entitled to consider themselves His 
Sons. And all who are so consecrated, always and every- 
where, are “Sons of God.” 


9.—Fesus Christ the Son of God. 


Jesus Christ is ‘The Son of God,” because, having un- 
reservedly consecrated himself to God for the Service of 
Mankind, he was fully and forever accepted of God, by the 
Adoption of Sonship, as “ the first-born of many brethren ” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 67 
Fa RRS Fae FORE FRE Tr py RTRSY care cae rg Ve cre mor pam ecee arc  t ehoh Larn 


through whose leadership and example all men may, in like 
manner, become Sons of God;—as the Scriptures teach, 
“ Beloved now are we the Sons of God,” and “ As many as 
are led by the Spirit of God, they are Sons of God.” * 


10.— Fesus Christ the Only Son of God. 


Jesus Christ is the “only” or “only-begotten ” Son of 
God in the sense that, inasmuch as he is the only one of men 
who has unreservedly consecrated himself to God for the 
Service of Mankind, therefore is he the only one whom God 
has fully and forever accepted by “the adoption of Son- 
ship ’’ as—in the highest sense—His Son. Therefore is he 
worthy to be called God’s only or “only-begotten Son”: 
according to the Scriptures, ‘He learned obedience by the 
things that he suffered,” and “Thou art my Son, this day 
have I begotten thee,” and “ Wherefore God also hath 
highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above 
every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of ¢hzugs in heaven, and things in earth, and things 
under the earth; and that every tongue should confess Jesus 
Christ is Master to the glory of God the Father.” 


11.—Conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. 


Jesus Christ was “ Conceived of the Holy Spirit and born 
of the Virgin Mary” in the sense that all, who on Earth 
shall attain to perfect Holiness, must be conceived in Holi- 


* NOTE, 


Alexander the Great in the Temple of Ammon was saluted by the High- 
Priest as Son of God. Alexander respectfully accepted the salutation, but 
added : ‘‘ God is by nature the Father of all ; it is no wonder then that all best 
men may, without irreverence, be called His Sons.” So (but in an unspeakably 
higher and holier sense) Jesus Christ as the supreme, the zdeal man called him- 
self and is rightly called THE Son of God. Among the Romans, Greeks, and 
Hebrews, for centuries before the Christian era, the phrases ‘‘ Sons of God ” 
as applied to all good men, and ‘‘ The Son of God” (or ‘a god,” or ‘a god in 
human form,” or ‘‘ /ogos incarnate,” or ‘‘ word made flesh ”) as applied to the 
best, greatest, or zdeal man, were in common use. So Christianity added 
nothing new when, by its Divine Method of Eclecticism, it adopted and made 
use of these phrases, 


68 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


eae ee RO ene a i et tere 
ness, and born of a pure mother in particular and of a pure 
ancestry in general. The “ Holy Spirit,” or Spirit of Holi- 
ness, is the guzckening power of God in man—pre-natal as 
well as post-natal.* 


12.—The Pre-existence of Fesus. 


Jesus was “ The Word—or Logos—of God Incarnate ‘oan 
the philosophical or metaphysical sense of Neo-Platonism, 
as found in the Proem of the Fourth Gospel. This doctrine 
is not taught in any other part of the Bible. Neither as a 
dogma nor as a widely received teaching was it known in 
the Christian Church of the first two Centuries. Therefore, 
in the view of Higher Criticism, 2¢ may or may not be re- 
ceived. But “The Pre-existence of Jesus” is everywhere 


* NOTE, 

In other respects Jesus may have been born by natural agencies, as have been 
all other men. His birth was supernatural in the above sense. But in that 
sense only, so far as Historic Confirmations are concerned—thatis, his own 
claims, the claims of his parents, the testimony of his Disciples, the writings of 
his Chief Apostle St. Paul, or of others who ought to have known ; and who, 
had they known or éelieved it, would most certainly have proclaimed it widely 
as the first and chief Supernatural Sanction of Christianity. Of all this nothing 
reliable or sufficiently confirmed is found in the Bible. The claim of Pro- 
phetic Announcement (as that of Isaiah) is fanciful and unfounded. The 
beautiful accounts of The Annunciation and The Birth, are the Poetry of Ad- 
miring Reverence, which must be interpreted and believed szmply as Poetry. 
For a hundred years after The Annunciatian and The Birth not a word is heard 
of them, not a hint is found, except in the Apocryphal Marvels, which ignorant 
men wrote and ignorant people believed. One of these ** Apocryphal Marvels” 
happened to be retained in (or, more probably, added to) the opening Chapter 
of Matthew’s Gospel as an Addendum of the /argely Apocryphal Genealogy of 
Jesus. Except here, and in a single interrogation found in the first Chapter of 
St. Luke’s Gospel thirty-fourth verse, not a reference to or hint of any such a 
Supernatural Conception or Birth as is popularly claimed is found in the entire 
New Testament. Without its recognition the Christian Church was founded, 
organized, and (for two of its most important and holy Centuries) flourished. 
If it could be dispensed with then, certainly it can be now. It is not in- 
credible, and whoever must, may believe it. But it is certainly not historically 
verified ; and all who have given up the dogma of the Verdal Inspiration of the 
Bible, must also reject the dogma of the Supernatural Conception and Birth of 
Jesus (in the sense of popular ‘‘ Orthodoxy”) as binding upon the Faith and 
Consciences of intelligent Christians. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 69 
pete LEN a ie iS ee ee A nal a oi aa 
taught in the New Testament, and was everywhere held in 
the Early Christian Church. So also is the Pre-existence of 
all Human Souls everywhere taught, or implied, or taken for 
granted, in the whole Bible; as it was also an almost Uni- 
versal Belief of the Early Christian Centuries. 


13.—Before all Worlds ;—By Whom all Things were made. 


The above explained teachings of the Bible render it com- 
prehensible and reasonable to believe that Jesus the Christ 
was “begotten of his Father before all worlds”; and that 
he was the /ogos, or word, “ by whom all things were made.” 


14.—God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God: 
begotten, not made. 

In a general sense every man whom “God created in His 
own image and after His own likeness”; in a special sense 
every “new born” or spiritually re-created man; but,in an 
unspeakably higher sense, Jesus the Christ is “God of God, 
Light of Light, Very God of Very God: begotten, not 
made.” In this Bible sense, as well as philosophically and 
rationally, Jesus the Christ zs God; and it is proper to obey 
and adore him as such. 


15.—One Catholic and Apostolic Church. 


There is “one Catholic and Apostolic Church” in the 
sense of the Scriptures, which teach that “God is no re- 
specter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him 
and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him,” and 
“Whosoever doeth the will of my Father who is in Heaven 
the same is my brother, and my sister, and my mother ’— 
which teaching is beautifully expressed in the Communion 
Office of the Book of Common Prayer of the English—or 
Episcopal—Church in the words “ The blessed company of 
all faithful people.” 


16.—The Bible ts the Word of God. 


The Christian Bible is ‘The Word of God” in the sense 
that it has thus far proved itself to be chief and supreme 


70 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


among those manifold Divine Revelations concerning which 
itself teaches ‘‘ The invisible things of Him from the Crea- 
tion of the World are clearly seen, being understood from 
the things that are made, even His eternal power and God- 
head”; and ‘“ God, who at sundry times and in divers man- 
ners spoke in times past unto the fathers through Prophets 
hath, in these last days, spoken unto us through a Son.” 


17.— The Holy Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. 


Baptism by the use of water is a “Sacrament” in the 
sense of an “ outward sign of inward Grace” proffered, ac- 
cepted, and diligently retained “till life’s end.”” —The Lord's 
Supper is also a “Sacrament” in the sense of a “‘remem- 
brance that Christ died for us, feeding on him in our hearts 
by faith with thanksgiving.” According to all the teachings 
of the New Testament Scriptures, and of the Church of the 
Early Centuries, these two, and these only, are “ The Holy 
Sacraments ”’ of The Christian Religion. 


18.—The Holy Ghost. 


“The Holy Ghost” is The Spirit of God, or The Spirit of 
Truth, or The Spirit of Holiness, which—forever and every- 
where—seeks to enlighten, inspire, guide, comfort, and save 
the souls of men; with the one and only condition that they 
will devoutly proffer acceptance, welcome, and eager co- 
operation. 


19.—Recetving the Holy Ghost. 


Such hearty and entire acceptance and welcome of The 
Spirit of God, or The Spirit of Truth, or The Spirit of Holi- 
ness, and such ceaseless co-operation as to result in God's 
enthronement in the soul, is “receiving the Holy Ghost.” 
Whosoever has not thus enthroned God in his Soul, has not 
been “born of the Spirit. And ‘ whosoever is not born of 
the Spirit, cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 71 


20.—hose from the Dead and Ascended to Heaven. 


Jesus Christ “rose from the dead and ascended into 
Heaven” in the sense of the Scriptures, which teach that 
“there is a Spiritual Body” over which Death hath no 
power; that “Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom 
of God”’; and, that all who live and die in Holiness shall, in 
like manner, “rise from the dead and ascend into Heaven.” 


21.—Heaven and Hell. 


The alternatives of human choice and destiny are 
‘Heaven ” and “ Hell,” in the sense that they are “ within ”’ 
us, as holy or unholy characters which will “ comfort” us or 
“torment” us forever, without regard to locality, or to ex- 
ternal conditions—which was emphatically the teaching of 
Jesus and of his chief Apostle, St. Paul. 


22.—Shall come again to judge the World, whose Kingdom 
shall have no End. 


Jesus The Christ and The Only Son of God—as already 
explained—is the “ highly exalted ” of God and ¢he “ Teacher,” 
the “ Example” and ¢he “ Saviour” of Mankind. As such 
he must also be “ Our Judge.” Himself said ‘I will not leave 
you; I will come unto you; Lo! I am with you always 
even unto the end of the World.” In this sense—though 
physically invisible—he is the ever-Living, ever-present Christ ; 
and Christendom is his rightful “ Kingdom,” and shall be, 
“World without end, Amen.” In this, his Rightful King- 
dom, he, for eighteen centuries, has been, is now, and ever 
shall be enthroned as ‘“‘ Judge of the World.” Amen and 
Amen. . 

ALI.-—STILLSOPEN | TOANEW LIGHT, 


The mere Hireling in Religion as in other things, may say 
—as a Hireling Politician is represented as saying,—“ These, 
my constituents, are my sentiments ; if they do not suit you 
they—can be altered!” But the Truth-lover and Truth- 
loyalist always says, These are my convictions; they can be 
altered, dut only by the suggestions of The Spirit of Truth 


72 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


speaking anew, and more audibly, through my own increased 
Intelligence and Floliness. 


“He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of 
his belly shall flow rivers of Zéving water. This spake he of The 
Spirit, which a// who believed on him should receive.” 

“ Howbeit when He, The Spirit of Truth, is come, He shall 
guide you into a Truth.” 

““ And they were a// filled with the Holy Spirit ; and began to 
speak . . . as The Spirit gave them utterance.” 

“In Like manner The Spirit also helpeth oxy infirmities.” 

“ For as many as are led by The Spirit of God, they are Sons 
of God.” 

“The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our Spirit.” 


“ And it shall be in the Zast¢ days, saith God, 

I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: 

And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, 

And your young men shall see visions, 

And your old men shall dream dreams : 

Yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those 
days 

Will I pour forth of my Spirit ; and they shall prophesy.” 


These promises and assurances only Jegan to be realized 
at Pentecost. Since the Second Century they have been 
either widely perverted or largely forgotten. Renascent 
Christianity is to be their revival and gradual-leading-on, 
through the ages, to a final and full Realization. 


XLII.—DEGENERATION OF PROTESTANTISM—PERSISTENT 
TENDENCIES TO REVERT. 


When the scholarly, broad-minded, warm-hearted Chap- 
lain of the departing Speedwell and Mayflower said to his 
weeping flock—about to leave him forever—‘ There is more 
light yet to shine from the Word of God,” he scattered the 
first seed of that Advanced Protestantism which has ever 
since been springing up and ¢ryzmg to flourish—in spite of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 73 


the unceasing efforts of “ Orthodoxy”’ to trample it down 
and root it out. 

Till then, it was generally conceded that Protestantism as 
Luther, Henry VIII., Cromwell, and Laud left it, was the 
final stage of Christianity’s Evolution. In its Rituals of 
Worship probably, in its Ecclesiastical Methods possibly, but 
in its Doctrines or Dogmatic Statements certainly it should 
never be changed. The Ultima Thule had been reached. 
No navigator would ever venture beyond; should he be so 
fool-hardy, certain disaster and ruin would await him. The 
end had been attained; the height, depth, length, and 
breadth of Divine Truth fully and forever compassed. The 
three Creeds, and especially the Athanasian, contained it all; 
whosoever should doubt it, ‘“‘let him be Anathema ”—with- 
out question he should “ perish everlastingly.” 

Such were the common, seemingly almost unanimous, 
conceptions of all ‘Orthodox ”’ Christians. ‘The Reforma- 
tion” had settled it all: no more questions were to be 
asked. The Earth on the back of the Elephant, the Ele- 
phant on the back of the Tortoise; Sixteenth Century Pro- 
testantism on the back of Fourth Century Theology, Fourth 
Century Theology on the back of Judaism—that explained 
it all. To enquire any further, certainly to expect any 
further changes, was “to fly in the face of Providence.” 
On such or similar suppositions, Lutheranism organized itself 
in Germany and in Scandinavia; Anglicanism and Presby- 
terianism in Great Britain; Puritanism in New England; 
Episcopacy and all the other Denominations in the United 
States of America. All were one in this, and in this only, 
that all alike fixed about them a Faith-line (in military 
phrase a Death-line). This Faith-line fixed about them was 
in triangular form: unalterable Ritual on this side, ux- 
changeable Ecclesiasticism on that side, and zzfallible Doc- 
trines on the other side. True, every one of the hundred 
or more “ orthodox ”’ Sects, as they sprang up, differed as to 
the nature and limits of the first and second sides; but as 
to the third they were, and are, united. Each, of its own 
triangular boundaries, said, sternly, 7ius far and no farther. 


74 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


In this way Protestantism became, virtually, another Papacy 
or Patriarchate ;—with endless popes and patriarchs instead 
of one. So too, in its degeneration, it soon came to repeat 
the intolerance and even the persecutions of the Autocratic 
Romanism whence it sprang. It hung Quakers, burnt 
Witches, banished Baptists and Romanists alike, in one 
portion of its domain; and, in all portions and among all 
its “orthodox” Sects alike, inhibited a free Religious 
Press, prohibited free Theological Speech, bound Reason, 
gagged Conscience, stifled Conviction, suppressed Enquiry, 
just as always had been done by degenerate Christianity 
back to the Fourth Century. True, on the part of most of 
the Protestant Sects, the triangular boundaries have been 
slightly extended now and then; but this only as compelled 
by indignant and influential Protesters from inside. True 
also that the prohibitions and penalties have grown less 
numerous and less severe; this, also, only as compelled, and 
in like manner. But the boundaries are still fred, with 
their accompanying prohibitions and penalties; and none 
but the boldest and bravest ever venture to disregard 
them. As to the “ penalties,’ they have changed in form, 
but hardly in substance, from those of Maternal Romanism. 
Ostracism (social as well as religious) has taken the place 
of Anathemas. Expulsions or depositions have super- 
seded gibbet, and pyre; heresy-trials the inquisition, and 
whispers-of-heresy the thumb-screw and rack. The perse- 
cutions of medieval Romanism, nay, even the stones and 
the cross of First Century Judaism, were, after all, easier for 
a genuine hero to bear than is the pusillanimous ostracism, 
the pestering heresy-trials, and the wz-get-at-able suspicions 
which now are the punishments of all accused of “ hetero- 
doxy”’ or charged with Theological Unsoundness. 

All this and much more—so painful to recall, and yet 
demanding to be recalled, in order to warn against continued 
degeneration—indicates the past and present Degeneration 
of Protestantism ; it shows also how strong, even zn zt, is the 
old, universal, always persistent Tendency to Revert—zz 
Religion as in everything else. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 75 


“Mine hand shall be upon the prophets that see vanity, and 
that divine lies: 

“ Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, 
Peace; and there was no peace ;— 

“Lo wit, the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning 
Ferusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and there ts 
no peace, saith the Lord God.” 

“Think not that I am come to send peace upon the Earth ; 
L came not to send peace, but a sword.” 

“ The Wisdom that is from above is first, pure—then peace- 
able.” 


XLITII.—THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION ONLY THE BEGIN- 
NING OF NEEDED AND ESSENTIAL REFORMS. 


When Christianity began to revert, it began, and till now 
has continued, to revert in three general directions. Its 
Symbolism (or Ritual) grew toward that of Heathenism ; 
its Ecclesiasticism grew toward Despotism ; and its Dogma 
grew toward the Superstitions of Paganism. The Protestant 
Reformation began, and has continued, as only a partial 
Reform of the first, a very slight Reform of the second, and 
no Reform at all of the third. (@) The Ritual of all the 
Protestant Sects is a marked advance upon that of the 
Medieval Churches—Roman and Greek Catholicism. (4) 
The Ecclesiastism of all the Protestant Sects is a slight 
advance; the same tyranny (in councils, conventions, and 
other officialisms) exists in modified forms; instead of one 
Pope or Patriarch, there have come to be hundreds or thou- 
sands called by various names. (c) The Dogmatism of the 
Fourth Century, increasing in popular favor down through 
the Dark Ages till now, remains essentially un-reformed, 
except among those Protestant sects known and condemned 
as Heretics—the Unitarians, United Brethren, Christians, 
etc. What is now needed, called for, and demanded by 
rapidly increasing Protestants of the Higher Order (the 
most scholarly, virtuous, and reverent Christians of Christen- 
dom) is a Completed or, at least, a rapidly Completing Re- 


76 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


form. Away with the Symbolisms or Rituals of essential 
Heathenism! Down with Tyrants and Tyrannies in Church 
even more than in State! Banish to the shades of the past 
all Dogma or Forms of Dogma that bind Christianity to the 
superstitious beliefs of the degenerate Religions of Pagan- 
ism! This is, and more and more is to be, the Three-fold 
Cry of those “ Protesters” who represent, and will continue 
more and more to represent, the Highest Intelligence, 
Morality, and Faith of the Christian World. 


“And while he lingered, the man laid hold upon his hand 
. and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. 


“And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth 
abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, 
neither stay thou tn all the plain.” 


“T will overturn, overturn, overturn . . . until He 
comes whose right wt ts.” 


“ And Fesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to 
the plough, and looking back, ts fit for the Kingdom of God.” 


“TT know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and 
how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast 
tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast 
found them liars: 


“ And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake 
hast laboured, and hast not fainted. 


“Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou 
hast left thy first love. 


“ Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and 
repent, aud do the first works, or else I will come unto thee 
guickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except 
thou repent. 


“ He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith 
unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat 
of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in 
the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving 
he that receiveth tt. 


“As many as I love, 1 rebuke and chasten ; be zealous there- 
fore, and repent.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT ¥Y, Tf 


XLIV.— “‘ THOUGH ALL MEN SHOULD FORSAKE THEE, YET 
WILT NO Tale 


It is hard for a Leader to be deserted and left to stand 
alone. Almost as hard is it for a follower to stand alone, or 
almost alone, with his deserted Leader. The most tragic in- 
cident in the life of the Divine Founder of Christianity was 
that of Calvary ; when, deserted by all the world and his few 
bosom friends besides, he felt himself, for a moment, de- 
serted by his Heavenly Father too! The next most tragic 
incident was that of Gethsemane, concerning which he spoke 
prophetically : ‘‘ Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, 
that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall 
leave me alone: and yet Iam not alone, because the Father 
is with me”’ ; and during which he said, so piteously, to his 
sleeping chosen three, “‘ What, could ye not watch with me 
one hour?” 

But even more ¢ryzng to faith and courage, though not so 
impressive to the world, was that incident recorded in the 
sixth chapter of the Fourth Gospel: “ Many therefore of his 
disciples, when they had heard /hzs, said, This is an hard 
saying; who can hear it? . . . From that time many 
went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus 
unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” 

Deserted by all the rest because of his “ hard sayings,” he 
turns—imploringly and yet defiantly—_to the twelve and asks, 
What are you going todo? Will you stand by me? Ifso, 
most glad shall I be; if not, so must 2¢ be / I will not retreat, 
I will not prevaricate, I w2d/ stand alone! Almost as brave 
were the twelve, who at once responded: “‘ Master, to whom 
shall we go? Thou only speakest the words of Eternal 
Life.’ He who was mouthpiece for the twelve on this 
occasion, on another equally trying one still more bravely 
exclaimed, “‘ Though all men should be offended at [forsake | 
thee, yet will I not.” 

This spirit of disregard for the number of one’s adherents 
or co-adherents ; this unconcern as to majorities and popu- 
larities ; this willingness to stand with the few; this resolve 


78 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


to stand even a// alone with Truth—as God reveals it to the 
soul through that ‘Spirit of Truth’ which He ever “ gives 
freely ” to all who seek it zz pureness of life and sincerity of 
heart—this spirit is the one and only test of a genuine Chris- 
tian. Who has little of this has little of Christ. Who has 
much of this has much of Christ. Who rule and direct 
the whole life according to it—let men “ take knowledge of 
them that they have been with Jesus.” 

The great leader of the Protestant Reformation pro- 
claimed himself a follower of Jesus in no other words more 
truly than when he exclaimed—“ Here I stand, I cannot 
otherwise, so help me God!” and again—in the very face of 
an impending martyr-death—“ If every tile on every roof 
were a devil, I would go forward!” All that has ever been 
wrought for God, and Truth, and Humanity—from the day 
of faithful Abraham to the day of The Christ, and from the 
day of The Christ till now—has been wrought in this spirit 
of genuine Christianity. ’T is hard to stand in the small and 
scattered ranks of the always unfashionable, always despised 
minority. Many there are, even in this “ wicked and adulter- 
ous generation,” who know well, from bitter experience, what 
are the self-sacrifices and sorrows that belong to Truth-seek- 
ing; and what the obloquy and shame that belong to Truth- 
speaking. But there are, as they also well know, the unspeak- 
ably higher compensations of a good conscience ; so that one 
can gladly as well as boldly say, ‘“‘ If there are but ten people 
in the world who deal with Religion intelligently and hon- 
estly, Iam resolved to be one of the ten.” They also find 
comfort in remembering that all who have been noblest in 
themselves, and most helpful to the world, have stood 
among the despised minority and endured, as martyrs, the 
cross and the shame. He who was derided by Pharisees and 
Sadducees; whose followers ‘went back and walked with 
him no more”; whose disciples “all forsook him and fled ” ; 
and who, in his extremity, cried out ‘“ My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken me?’’—even he is our Divine 
Example of steadfast loyalty to honest convictions of Duty 
and Truth. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 79 


He who wrote that sublime Epistle to the Hebrews, 
teaches and exhorts us out of his own brave, blessed experi- 
ence: “Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the 
people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Letus 
go forth therefore unto him wzthout the camp, sharing his re- 
Proactive) 28) Por, Godiihathjsaidja tl willtneversleave 
thee, nor forsake thee. Sothat we may boldly say, The 
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do 
unto me.” 


XLV.—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY A REVIVAL OF COMBINED 
PIETY AND MORALITY. 


(a) Piety and Morality combined was Christianity as taught 
by Fesus. 


Among the first words of Jesus was the injunction, Seek 
ye the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness—that is, 
God Himself as an object of love and worship, and God 
in his characteristics or virtues as a model of human char- 
acter; in short, piety or internal religion, and morality or 
external religion. Both of these, as mutually related and 
mutualiy dependent, are to be sought, sought with great 
diligence and persistency as that word would imply, and 
sought as first both in order of time and order of im- 
portance. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His 
righteousness.” 

True Christianity is piety and morality combined; or 
more exactly, is morality based upon piety and growing 
out of it. Observe: not morality the basis and piety the 
outgrowth, but the opposite. Piety, z. ¢., recognition, rever- 
ence, worship, and love of God, is the ground, the soil, the 
womb from whence all true morality must spring. Zrue 
morality: not meaning by that the morality of respecta- 
bility, of policy, of esthetics, which is the morality of man; 
but the morality of principle, of righteousness, of holiness, 
which is the morality of God. If a man is moral merely 
because it is respectable or politic to be so, or because he 
thinks it beautiful, as a pretty face is beautiful, his morality 


80 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


is only skin deep, pocket deep, public-sentiment deep; and 
like the seed in thin soil it will be scorched and withered as 
soon as the sun is up. But the man who is moral from 
principle, moral because his recognition of the omniscient 
holiness of God inspires him to rectitude, and purity, and 
truth ; rectitude of heart, as well as of life; purity within, as 
well as without; truth in secret thought and silent motive, 
as well as in profession and in deed ;—the man whose moral- 
ity is thus based upon his soul’s conscious and constant 
recognition of God, is the truly moral man; his is the 
morality of piety, as deep-rooted as God Himself, because 
planted in him ; and, like the seed in good soil, it shall bring 
forth fruit unto everlasting life. 

This is what we mean by saying that true religion of any 
form, but true Christianity in particular, is a combination of 
piety and morality ; or more exactly, is morality based upon 
piety and growing out of it. 


(b) The two Extremes. 


Now, as a matter of fact, the two extremes towards which 
the masses of mankind have always been tending, the Scylla 
and the Charybdis against which they have alternately been 
dashing, the two opposite directions of that “ broad road” 
which at either end terminates in destruction, have been 
these two elements or components of true religion—piety 
and morality—divorced and made to stand at a distance; 
while the “ golden mean,” the “mid-stream,” the “ narrow 
way,” that leadeth to everlasting life, and which “few” have 
been able to find, has been a combination of the two. Piety 
without morality—theoretical belief in God, formal worship, 
verbal adoration, professional love,—without any particular 
emphasis upon personal righteousness as the fruit and sub- 
stance of all—this has been one extreme towards which 
the greater multitude has always been tending. 


Morality zwzthout piety—without practical recognition of 
God, without conscious communion with Him, without 
worship, or adoration, or love; in other words, moral char- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. SI 
a 


acter emphasized: goodness, blamelessness in the sight of 
man, external rectitude, the commandment “Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor,” observed without any particular regard 
to the first commandment, “ Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God,”—this has been the other extreme towards which the 
lesser multitude has always been tending. While piety and 
morality, God and His righteousness, worship and fidelity, 
adoration and goodness, love doth in sentiment and in life, 
both to God and to man, the first and second command- 
ments combined—this is the Golden Mean which, as the 
old Chinese sage used to say, “few have been able to at. 
tain.” Nor do we wonder that few have attained it when 
we remember how much easier it is for everybody to run to 
extremes than to hold themselves in equilibrium ; how much 
less effort is required to drift with the breeze and the im. 
petuous current than to pull at the oars of self-regulation 
and restraint; how much more zatural it is to seize a half 
of the truth or a little portion of it and make a “ hobby ” of 
that, than it is to wisely seek and patiently practise the 
truth in its completeness. 


(c) Religious Ceremonialism and Ethical Proprieties. 


To transform religion into a sentiment and a ceremony on 
the one hand, and to transform it into a routine of external 
Proprieties on the other, is much easier, requires much less 
effort, is much more in accordance with the inclinations of 
human nature than is the practice of that true religion 
which comprehends both God and man; both devotion of 
soul and devotion of life ; both piety of the heart and morality 
of character. This, as Plato says, “isa most difficult thing,” 
and just because it is difficult the masses of men have always 
been shrinking from it and satisfying themselves with being 
either very pious to the neglect of morality or very moral 
to the neglect of piety. And so the world has been forever 
drifting, now to one extreme, now to another; now toward 
superstition, and now toward infidelity; now toward gross 
ceremonialisms and idolatry, and now toward theoretical 
irreligion and open atheism. 

6 


$2 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Sake ee Ge Lo a ee Rea ee oe eS EA ee Ea 


Jerusalem, as Jesus found it, “a whitewashed sepulchre, 
filled with dead men’s bones,” a house of God transformed 
into a den of thieves; Athens, as Paul found it, “ wholly 
given up” to senseless superstitions and gross idolatries ; 
Germany, as Luther found it; England, as Wickliffe and 
Wesley found it, full of religious institutions and churches 
transformed into organizations of debauchery and intrigue 
—these have been the final results of piety divorced from 
morality. Imperial Rome as it was in the time which suc- 
ceeded Epicurus and the Stoics, full of heroisms, but at 
the same time full of inhumanities, suicides, and despairs ; 
France, revolutionized by infidelity, as it was in the time 
of Mirabeau and Robespierre, when God, religion, and im- 
mortality were not only practically but theoretically dis- 
carded—these have been the final results of morality 
divorced from piety; or of an attempt to direct individual 
character and human events without a positive recognition 
of God and a devout reliance upon Him for wisdom and 
help. 


(d) Partial Truths accepted as the Whole Truth. 


A partial truth adopted as a fundamental principle, or 
emphasized with an emphasis which belongs only to the 
whole, is always dangerous, both to individuals and com- 
munities ; its immediate results may not be so perceptible ; 
but, if persisted in, its final results must be disastrous. And 
the main reason why the moral and religious history of the 
world is a history of disasters and failures is because men 
have always been emphasizing partial truths, building up 
theories, characters, institutions upon them, when they 
ought rather to have sought “the truth, the whole truth, 
and nothing but the truth.” Now the partial truths of re- 
ligion are piety and morality divorced, with an emphasis 
placed upon one or the other which belongs only to both 
combined. 

“ Fear God and keep His commandments,” was the whole 
truth as propounded by the ancient teacher of Wisdom. 
But one class of religionists have taken only the first clause 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 83 


a aL ee a et, 


as their motto, and with “ Fear God” upon their banners, 
they have always been leading their ecclesiastical hosts into 
all sorts of gross and sensuous as well as senseless supersti- 
tions. The other class, in their reaction, have caught only 
the last clause, “keep the commandments,” and giving the 
main, sometimes the whole emphasis to this, have led their 
smaller but equally mistaken hosts, first, into a religion of 
pure humanitarianism ; second, into religious skepticism; 
third, into infidelity, and fourth and finally, into theoretical 
and practical atheism. Jesus re-stated this old truth in its 
wholeness at the very beginning of his ministry, when he 
said: Seek the kingdom of God, and Seek the righteousness 
of God. But one class of men seized the first half of his 
truth and construed it into ceremonial piety, while another 
Class seized the last half and construed it into external mo- 
rality. So history has always been repeating itself down to 
the present day, and is now repeating itself as faithfully as 
ever before, in that superficial method and tendency of the 
multitude to get hold of a fraction of the truth and run with 
it into dangerous and disastrous extremes. 


(e) Rome or Reason. 


There has never been a time in which there was a wider 
separation between ceremonial piety and external morality, 
as distinct characteristics of two opposite tendencies in re- 
ligion, than there is at present throughout most of the Chris- 
tian world. Ritualists, on the one hand, are emphasizing 
titualism, as though it were the all-important thing. Ration- 
alists, on the other, are emphasizing reason and its codes of 
ethics, as though these were all-important. And toward the 
one or the other of these extremes the multitude of indi- 
vividuals and of organizations seem to be tending. ‘“ Rome 
or Reason ” is the question which almost all religious think- 
ers are putting to themselves, with the supposition that they 
must necessarily take one road or the other; while almost no 
one seems to dream that the whole truth is, not Rome or 
Reason, but Rome and Reason. Almost no one seems to 
comprehend the fact that Rome has run mad with half the 


84 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


truth, and Reason has run mad with the other half. The 
right way is to cast the devil out of both, and bring them 
together into one complete truth of religion and reason, piety 
and morality, the fear of God and works of righteousness 
conjoined. We speak of ‘“ Rome and Reason”’ in this con- 
nection because, historically and practically, piety has been 
the distinguishing feature of Romanism and morality the 
distinguishing characteristic of Rationalism. And these two 
bodies are the two extremes toward which, naturally and 
logically, all must tend, in proportion as piety is emphasized 
more than morality or morality more than piety. Both are 
partial developments produced by the unnatural repression 
of certain parts of religious truth, and by the unnatural 
stimulating of other parts; and, like all partial develop- 
ments they are both, relatively speaking, monstrosities and 
deformities.* 


—(f) The Golden Mean. 


Now, between these two, as between all extremes, there 
must be a Golden Mean, a “ mid-stream current,” a posi- 


* As an illustration we may take the following from the New York 7imes of 

the date of this writing : . 
‘“SAW THE ‘ DEVIL’ BURNED, 
‘* A PERFORMANCE AT THE SALVATION ARMY HEADQUARTERS. 

‘¢ Visitors to the Salvation Army Headquarters last night saw the ‘ devil’ dis- 
membered and dissected by Major , and also saw him burned to a crisp, 
from his cloven hoof to his horn-topped head, Incidentally they also heard the 
Major’s physiological lecture on the several parts of the ‘ devil’s’ anatomy, 

‘* His heart was called deceit, his wings were labeled as the ungodly amusement 
of prize fighting, his tail was composed of a pack of cards fastened end to end, 
his internal organs were composed of a string of whisky bottles and tobacco 
pipes. Each part or portion represented some supposed evil against which the 
army js waging war. 

‘« As a finality the lights were turned out and red fires ignited, and in the midst 
of the flame appeared the ‘ devil,’ who was quickly consumed and then vanished. 

‘« The performance was preceded by a parade of the army through the streets 
in the vicinity of the hall with the usual music.” 

Almost every day, and in almost every News Publication, similar reports of 
the doings and sayings of the popular Religious Bodies are made. Verily, Pro- 
testantism has already reverted to the Ages of Miracle Plays when, for instance, 
they enacted ‘‘ God the Father being waked up to come and see the rascally Fews 
murdering His Son!” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 85 


rene ee A se eT 


tion of equilibrium, in which piety and morality can be 
made to counterbalance, or to equiponderate, the one against 
the other. 

As we study the history of Christianity and of all reli- 
gions, we find this position of equilibrium has been attained 
by individuals in all ages, and approximately, now and then, 
by religious organizations. David, Pythagoras, Socrates, 
Paul, Luther, Wesley, Channing, are only a few represena- 
tive names taken at random from that large number of in- 
dividuals, known and unknown, of all religions and ages, 
who have both feared God and wrought righteousness: who 
have, in theory and practice, emphasized both piety and 
morality with an equal emphasis; and hence have become 
at the same time fervently devout toward God, and beauti- 
fully blameless and pure in the sight of men. 

Now and then, too, Institutional Religion has approxi- 
mated to, and in some cases has been made for a time to 
occupy, this position ; indeed all great religious reformations 
have been an attempt to arrest Institutional Religion in its 
wild rompings, its frantic dashings hither and thither, and 
bring it back to a just equipoise between Piety and Morality. 
This was what Moses attempted to do, when he established 
among the Israelites both an elaborate religious ritual and 
an elaborate code of morals; and though, on account of 
the inwrought stupidity of the people, his attempt was a 
perpetual failure, it nevertheless came nearer being a success 
than any other attempt of ancient times. Buddha too, 
Pythagoras, and Mahomet sought to draw the masses of 
their countrymen from superstitions on the one hand, and 
infidelity on the other ; and to bring them, through sincerity 
of worship and purity of character, into organized harmony 
both with God and with one another. 


(g) Fesus the great Uniter as well as Reformer. 


Jesus especially, of all religious reformers, made it the ob- 
ject of his reformation to institute a religion with God and 
Humanity as its corner-stones—with recognition of doth, love 


86 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


PETE ean eA Ona Soe etd ns ME a en LRT 


for both, service of both, blamelessness in the sight of both as 
its supreme characteristics and its fundamental truths. “ The 
kingdom of God is at hand, therefore repent.” “‘ Be born 
again of spirit and of water.” “ Be pure in heart,” and 
“ Hunger and thirst after righteousness.” “ Love God with 
all your heart and mind and strength,” and “ Love your 
neighbor as yourself.” ‘‘ Pray to God always,” and “ Do 
good to all men.” This was the well-balanced Gospel—the 
truth in its wholeness and completeness which Jesus spent 
his life in teaching, which he commissioned his disciples to 
teach, and which he made the “ Rock” upon which he de- 
sired his followers to build his church. 3 


(h) Zhe old story of Tendency to Revert. 


But hardly had the building commenced, hardly had the 
foundation been laid, when all but a few solitary workmen 
deserted it, and, with partial truths as new foundations, ac- 
cording to their own extravagant fancies, began to build on 
the one side Dogmatisms, Ceremonialisms, and Superstitions; 
and on the other, Rationalisms, Humanitarianisms, and In- 
fidelities: and so it has been through all the centuries down 
to the present time. There has been, indeed, an Apostolic 
Succession of well-balanced reformers, who, planting them- 
selves firmly upon the rock of Faith azd Works, of Piety 
and Morality which Jesus himself established, have there 
been building, slowly but surely, the True Church against 
which “the gates of hell shall not prevail.” But the multi- 
tude of Christians, both individually and institutionally, have 
always been tending to extreme positions. They have al- 
ways been building either on the side of Rome or on the 
side of Reason; either with ceremonial piety, or with ex- 
ternal morality, as their corner-stone. And the farther from 
that true foundation which combines them both in a living, 
well-wrought, well-balanced truth they have been able to 
get—whether to the one side or the other—the greater has 
seemed to be their satisfaction and their content. And so 
it is in a great degree to-day. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 87 
ee ee oe eNO een Sage Oe RHE 
(i) Building on the Side of Rome, or of Reason, or on the 

“ Rock” between. 


Should we attempt to give an illustration of the geograph- 
ical distribution and relation of the various religious organi- 
zations of Christendom at the present time with reference to 
this ‘true foundation” we should say: Romanism is on the 
extreme right, and over against her are built all those who 
emphasize Dogma and Ritual more than they do Reason 
and Morality; Rationalism is on the extreme left, and over 
against her are built all those who emphasize Reason and 
Morality more than they do Doctrine and Worship; while 
all those who, with Jesus, emphasize both Faith and Works, 
Piety and Morality, with an equal emphasis are standing 
upon the true foundation itself, where the true Church of 
Christ is being built; and where, when built, it shall stand 
and shine forever. In short, now, as always, in proportion 
as individuals or organizations emphasize one side of re- 
ligious truth more than another, in that proportion they are 
building upon another foundation than that which Jesus 
laid. His foundation was God and Humanity; God first 
and Humanity second, but both conjoined in service and in 
love. Only those who stand with their feet firmly planted 
upon these two stones, believing in God and believing in 
Man, loving God and loving Man, serving God with fervent 
piety and serving Man with blameless devotion—only these 
—and all these, without regard to sectarian distinction or 
name—building upon the true foundation “which is Jesus 
the Christ.” 

This was Christianity as Jesus founded it; and Renascent 
Christianity 1s its revival. 


XLVI.—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY A RE-ADJUSTMENT OF 
THE RELATIONS BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND THOSE 
EMPLOYED OR BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR. 


(a) The re-adjustment stated. 


Of the twentieth Century ze burning question will be, 
that which has smouldered beneath the smotherings and 


88 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


quenchings of Hierarchism, in Church and State, for sixteen 
centuries, but is now bursting forth with threatenings of 
fury and devastations everywhere in the civilized communi- 
ties of the world. The relations between Employers and 
those Employed or between Capital and Labor is, and more 
and more is to be, that “ burning question.” Among the 
first of all the practical issues which renascent Christianity 
will meet and mend is this. It must be true to its Divine 
Founder; and his first words of practical Holiness were 
words that concerned this primal relation of man to man. 
Himself a laboring man, a carpenter by trade, and toiling in 
that trade for his daily bread unceasingly, until within about 
two years of his martyr death, quite naturally his sympathies 
were with the working classes to which he belonged. From 
the first utterances that Tradition has preserved for us, down 
to the last, he was the tender, helping friend of the poor, 
the unfortunate, the oppressed, the outcast, the “ publicans 
and sinners”’: whom the rich and oppressive Pharisees and 
Sadducees, as Employers and Capitalists, held ever in iron 
grasp and beneath their compelling heels. ‘“ The Spirit of 
the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to 
preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the 
broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and 
recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are bruised.””’ Such was the opening sentence and the sub- 
stance of his initial sermon as a Reformer. Such also was 
the spirit and sum of all his sayings and doings for the 
entire two and a half years of his holy life as a public 
teacher. What exactly his position was on the question 
before us is well shown in the two central sentences of the 
Beatitudes taken from his matchless Sermon on the Mount. 
To the employers or capitalists he said, ‘‘ Blessed are the 
merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.” And to those em- 
ployed or the laborers he said, “‘ Blessed are the peace- 
makers; for they shall be called the children of God.” In 
these two Beatitudes lies the whole question of the re- 
adjustment of relations between “the classes and the 
masses’ so much agitated just now—and more and more 
to be agitated as the centuries shall come and go. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 89 


(b) How the Christian Employee should behave toward his 
Employer. 


The parable of Jesus about The Laborers in the Vineyard 
was intended to illustrate, if we may so speak, the sacred- 
ness of a bargain between man and man. The master of a 
vineyard had made a bargain with certain laborers. When 
the work was done they thought they ought to have more 
than their stipulated wages. Their reason was that they 
saw others were getting more, or more in proportion; so 
they seem to have extemporized a sort of secret labor 
organization, or there may have been one already organized 
—who knows ?—and possibly it may have been called “ The 
Knights of Labor’’—for things that have been are, and 
things that are have been, and there is nothing new under 
the sun. At any rate, they talked it over together, and 
appointed or commissioned a spokesman to act as their 
leader and present their complaint, practically demanding 
higher wages. To this complaint their employer answered: 
“Friend, did I not agree with thee for so much?’’—as much 
as to say, A bargain is a bargain, business is business. I 
agreed with you and with the others for a certain amount 
per day. I cannot, or I choose not, to pay more. If you 
prefer not to come another day, very well; I will employ 
others. There are your wages for to-day. I do thee no 
wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for so much? 

Now, what are these dissatisfied employees going to do 
about it? If they are Christians and gentlemen—a gentle- 
man is a Christian always and a Christian is always a gentle- 
man—if they are Christians and gentlemen, they will follow 
the advice of John Baptist to the laborers, tax-collectors, 
and soldiers of his day: advice which Jesus enforced in all 
his teachings; as also did St. Paul, even to sending back the 
run-away slave, Onesimus, whom he called his beloved 
“friend and brother,” and even his “son,” sending him back 
to his master; because in running away he had broken a 
compact which he had made, or which the existing laws of 
the state had made for him—which laws, however unjust 
while they existed, ought to be reverenced; and which com. 


gO RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


pact, however offensive, ought not by violence or rebellion 
to be broken. 

The advice of John Baptist was: ‘“‘ Do violence to no 
man. . . . Be content with your wages.” The two 
sentences thus coupled together would seem to imply this: 
Be content with your wages as long as possible, as long as 
you can manage to live on them and cannot do better else- 
where. But at any rate, do violence to no man; your present 
employers, or your late employers, or anyone else. Go 
quietly and seek other ways of living; by all means, other 
remedies than violence for your wrongs. This advice the 
protesting employees of the parable of The Laborers in the 
Vineyard, would certainly follow if they were Christians and 
gentlemen. If they were atheists and loafers, nihilists and 
anarchists—as most of the bomb-throwing, dynamite-using 
leaders of modern strikes and mobs, and of social revolutions 
generally, are said to be—they would be likely to do most 
anything that is violent and revengeful. Believing in no 
God, they will assume to be gods themselves, and take 
matters in their own hands. Let us see, by illustrations, 
what the Bible and Christian way is. We must remember 
that those employees to whom Jesus and John the Baptist 
and St. Paul addressed themselves, were oppressed with 
double oppression, either of which was far more burthen- 
some than is any form of modern oppression. The Jewish 
yoke of national exactions and the Roman of civil exactions 
joined to make poverty poorer, toil severer, and compensa- 
tion far less adequate than any yoke of modern times—even 
than those of Russia on the necks of its peasantry, or of 
Britain on the necks of its subjects in Ireland and India are 
said to be to-day. 

And yet Jesus, John the Baptist, and St. Paul joined with 
all others whose words we find recorded in the New Testa- 
ment to recommend peaceable and patient content with 
one’s lot. 


(c) “ Peaceable and patient content with one's lot.” 


What does that mean? Why, it means belief in two 
things: first, in this statement of the Psalmist, “I have 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. gl 


been young and now am old, yet have I never seen the 
righteous forsaken nor his seed begging for bread.” And 
second, it means belief in the statement found everywhere 
throughout the Bible, but especially emphasized by Moses, 
and the Psalmist and St. Paul, ‘“‘ Vengeance is mine; I will 
repay, saith the Lord.” As to the first of these statements, 
to this day who ever saw a righteous man or woman—a man 
or woman who had loved and practised righteousness from 
youth up—who ever saw such an one utterly deserted, or 
his or her seed, xurtured and trained in righteousness, beg- 
ging for food? No one. Utter poverty and want are 
always the punishment of sin; we may be sure of it; sins 
of omission if not of commission, secret if not open, for- 
gotten if not remembered. So the truly righteous have 
nothing to fear, as to utter poverty and want, however 
small their wages may be. With St. Paul they may ex- 
claim, ‘‘ Having food and raiment, let us therewith be con- 
tent”: ‘“ Though we have nothing, yet do we possess all 
things”: Or with the Psalmist, ““I have been young and 
now am old, yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, 


nor his seed begging bread.” 


(d) “ Vengeance 1s mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” 


That is a thunderbolt of Divine threatening hurled at the 
head of all human oppressors, and the Christian, believing 
it to be such, is content to leave Almighty God to do His 
own work in His own good time. As the Psalmist again 
Bayo ee usawatiesprosperity oLatnes wicked 0m .4) pride 
compassed them about, violence covered them, their eyes 
stood out with fatness, they had more than heart could 
wish; they spake wickedly concerning oppression, they 
prospered in the world, they increased in riches’’—and yet 
what was their end? “Surely thou didst set them in 
slippery places. Thou castest them down to destruction. 
Now are they brought into desolation as in a moment they 
are utterly consumed with terror. God shall suddenly shoot 
at them with a swift arrow and they shall be wounded. And 
all men that see it shall say, This hath God done, for they 


Q2 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


shall perceive that this is His work. But the righteous shall 
rejoice in the Lord, and put their trust in Him; and all they 
that are true of heart shall be glad.” The Bible is full of 
such expressions. ‘O! earth, earth, earth, hear the word 
of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord, write this man childless, 
a man that shall not prosper in his days; for no man of his 
seed shall prosper.” ‘ Thou fool, this night thy soul shall 
be required of thee; then whose shall these things be?” 
‘“‘In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torment.” ‘Go to 
now, ye rich men, weep and howl, for your miseries that 
shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your 
garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is kankered, 
and the rest of them shall be a witness against you, and shall 
eat your flesh as it were with fire. . . . Behold the hire 
of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is 
of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them 
which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of 
Sabbaoth. . . . Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the 
coming of the Lord . . . behold the judge standeth be- 
fore the door.” And not only is the Bible full of this, but 
also history is full of illustrations and confirmations of it. 

There is a tradition that the Israelites in Egypt, when 
compelled by their oppressors to make brick without straw, 
used to comfort and encourage one another by quietly 
whispering as they met or passed : 


“ There is One who sees, 
There is One who sees ; 
He will punish them, 
He will punish them.” 


There was One who saw; there was One who punished. 
And there was One also who, in due time, delivered, and 
prospered, and blessed the patient Hebrew toilers, who tried 
to be content with their lot. On the banks of the Nile, 
travellers, we are told, may now hear these same words 
rhythmically repeated by hard toiling, poorly paid men, 
women, and children. As they toil they cheer each other 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 93 


by singing the ancient words of trust in Divine care and 
over rulings: 


“There is One who sees, 
There is One who sees ; 
He will punish them, 
He will punish them.” 


Not only in ancient times, but now; not only on the 
banks of the Nile in the days of Pharaoh, but on the banks 
of the Nile in these days—now and always, here and every- 
where—there is One who sees, One who will punish: One 
who in due time will deliver, and prosper, and bless, all who 
are truly righteous, and who put their trust in Him. ‘“ Ven- 
geance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” This, then, 
is the Bible and Christian way—the Bible and Christian 
attitude of the employé toward the employer. 


(e) Burning Sub-Questions. 


But there are some burning sub-questions of to-day which 
we of to-day must look squarely in the face, and consider 
the right way to meet and answer them—dquestions affecting 
the welfare of that vast body of employees, of all civilized 
States, who are citizens; and, as such, holding in hand the 
ballot—hold, if they only would realize it, the righting of 
their own wrongs; and, under Providence, the shaping and 
securing of their own present as well as eternal welfare. 
Some of these sub-questions let us glance at. But, lest our 
words of sympathy for and encouragement of the working 
classes should be misunderstood, let us first say that there 
are three or four things that a genuine Christian can have 
no sympathy with, and no toleration for, in either the work- 
ing classes or the wealthy classes—the poor or the rich. 

1. Indolence. The rich man’s indolent son or daughter 
who, without toil, lives upon another’s toil; and the striker or 
the tramp who eats another’s bread rather than work even for 
the smallest wages—even for ten cents a day, or for the poor 
crust he eats—these both, and both alike, all should condemn 


94 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


and detest. If a man will not work—it matters not who the 
man is—it isa shame for him to eat. And of an indolent 
woman, whether rich or poor, the same is equally true,— 
God’s truth, not man’s. 

2. That pauper pride or pride of pauperism,—whether in 
rich or in poor,—which permits one to live in dependence 
upon others, merely because the work which he or she finds 
to do is supposed to be too humble, or servile, or socially 
degrading. There is nothing so degrading as voluntary or 
avoidable dependence upon others: and, whoever has a 
spark left of manhood or of womanhood will dig in the ditch 
or scrub in the kitchen rather than be an idle, worthless 
parasite—sustained by the toil and sweat of parents, rela- 
tives, neighbors, or friends, to say nothing of public charity. 

3. Avoidable zgnorance and vice. The two generally go 
together, whether among the rich or among the poor. The 
empty-headed, dissipated children of wealth, whose leisure 
hours are devoted to fashionable amusement and folly; and 
the working classes, who spend their leisure hours on street 
corners, in groggeries, in sensational theatres, and in other 
idle and empty ways—and get up strikes chiefly because 
they want more money for strong drink and for other means 
of dissipation—for both of these classes and for both alike 
nothing but condemnation and contempt should be felt and 
expressed. 

4. Those who attempt to secure their rights by wzolence 
of any sort; whether it be by rebellion against established 
laws—so long as they are established laws—or by threaten- 
ing mobs—with their daggers, pistols, dynamite, bomb- 
shells, and infernal machines—or by labor organizations— 
which devise secret machinations, refusing to show their 
hands, and seeming to prefer darkness rather than light— 
or by one man or body of men commanding or even re- 
questing another man or body of men to “strike,” or to 
cease work merely because they themselves have chosen to 
do so. All of these things are impudent interferences with 
law, and order, and personal rights; and, especially on the 
part of Christian citizens, ought not for a moment to be 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 95 


resorted to or tolerated. Especially not on the part of 
American citizens. Why? Because American citizens, 
above all others, hold in their hands the ballot, and by this 
can—if they will wisely work and patiently wait—rectify 
their wrongs and secure their rights. 

A Roman senator being asked how to secure public re- 
form, answered: ‘‘Agitate, agitate, agitate!’ In this 
American democracy, where the laboring classes are and 
always must be the overwhelming majority, and where im- 
partial suffrage is and always must be universal; here es- 
pecially the way, and the only Christian way, to secure 
public reform is to agitate, agitate, agitate ; and, in addition, 
to legislate, legislate, legislate ; vote, vote, vote / 


(f) Special Reforms Favorable to the Working Classes which 
Renascent Christianity will insist upon. 


Having thus suggested the way by which reforms favora- 
ble to the working classes are to be sought and secured, let 
us now enumerate, with briefest comments, some reforms 
which appear to be not only timely, but also pressing neces- 
sities. As such every genuine Christian will join in efforts 
to secure them. 

1. That rent, food, clothing, and all needful commodities 
may be reduced to the very lowest prices for the advantage 
of the working classes. Public Revenues must be secured 
and Taxes paid chiefly if not entirely by the wealth of our 
country. To this end the working classes must demand at 
the ballot-box this four-fold method of relief: 

Tariff or import duties only on the luxuries of life. Pro- 
tection or export restrictions only on the necessities of life. 
Graduated Taxation, so that as wealth increases the per 
cent. of tax shall increase in regular proportion; wth severe 
penalties for any misstatements as to one’s taxable property. 
This is necessary: for as the famous revivalist says, ‘‘ More 
lies are told about money in general and about tax-lists in 
particular than about anything else in the world.’”—And, 
finally, large Succession Duties imposed upon all devised 


96 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


and inherited estates. With reference to this last it is suff- 
cient to quote the following from one of the leading daily 
papers: 

“ The chancellor of the exchequer has received $1,100,000 
as succession duty on the property of the late Duke of Buc- 
cleuch.” The above is from acablegram from London to 
New York, and is worthy of note. A more just and equita- 
ble tax cannot possibly be levied than that of ‘ Succes- 
sion.’ Why should our rich men’s heirs enjoy money they 
never earned without paying a tax upon it? In this four- 
fold way let the working classes demand, and at the ballot- 
box secure, reduced prices for all the needful commodities 
of life, to begin with. 

2. Then let them demand—azd at the ballot-box secure tt 
—that the present wide gulf between luxurious wealth of 
employers and depressing poverty of employees—the ex- 
tremes of capital and labor—be narrowed by some system 
of co-operative wages, whereby all employees shall share both 
the prosperity and the adversity of theiremployers. ‘“Ifone 
member suffer, all should suffer with it; if one member re- 
joice, all should rejoice with it.” This must be the law in 
Christian business as well as in the Christian church. As it 
now is, what have we in our Christian (?) communities all 
over the earth! The same extremes of luxurious wealth 
and of depressing poverty, which characterized, degraded, 
and at length destroyed, the mighty civilization of pagan 
Rome, and of all other pagan states to this day. 

Let us take some everywhere familiar examples. On a 
certain railroad, employees are getting $1.50 a day for from 
twelve to fifteen hours of hardest, most disagreeable, and 
dangerous work; and sometimes are months left without 
their pay at that; while the president is regularly drawing 
$30,000 a year for a few hours per day of sitting in a busi- 
ness office. The president in his easy-chair a few hours each 
day must regularly draw his $100 per day; while the break- 
man, trackman, coal-heaver must toil at $1.50 for fifteen 
hours of hard and dangerous work! Take another case. 
The receiver of a railroad—no wonder they are called 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 97 
recetvers—received one-quarter million of dollars for a few 
months’ overseeing of the road, while hard-worked em- 
ployees, from conductor and engineer down, were hardly 
able to keep their families from starving; and, worse still, 
thousands of widows and orphans all over the country were 
deprived, nay robbed, of their little stores put aside fora 
scanty livelihood by the “insolvency”’ of the Corporation 
which solicited their subscriptions, and then managed to 
“legally” transfer them to their own already swollen purses! 
Widows and orphans may be cheated, and hard-working 
employees’ families half starved: but the employers, and 
especially the recezvers, must recezve all they can manage to 
lay their hands on! And the worst of it is, that the laws of 
our Christian (?) land are made and executed iz favor of these 
high-handed robberies and oppressions. Another illustra- 
tion, this time a wholesale one. Presidents and directors of 
banks and of insurance companies ; of gas, water, telegraph, 
telephone companies ; presidents and directors of mining and 
milling, of manufacturing, of commercial and of extensive 
farming companies, pile up millions, live with every luxury, 
have more than heart can wish—while those who do the work 
and really earn the money, cramped and stinted, are driven 
to toil from dawn to dark; and when humbly asking an 
hour or two taken off their long day, or a shilling or two 
added to their scanty wages, are gruffly told that the “com- 
pany cannot afford it!” The company cannot afford it! 
It can afford to its well-dressed, easy and luxurious officials 
everything they ask—to its hard-working, self-denying em- 
ployees—zothing / And, if ever the times are hard and the 
companies’ income reduced, how do they manage it? By 
asking the wives and daughters of the rich officials to try 
and get along with fewer elegancies, and the officials them- 
selves to smoke less expensive cigars and drink less expen- 
sive champagnes? No, no! this cannot be done! but by 
telling their workmen that their wages must be reduced a 
shilling a day, and they must be content to wear their ragged 
coats, and their wives and daughters their shabby dresses 
“during these hard times.” Nay, they go further. If they 

7 


98 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


must live in a cellar henceforth instead of in a garret as now; 
and, Lazarus-fashion, beg crumbs upon the doorsteps and 
from the rich tables of Dives—Dives being a president or 
vice-president, or director or other official of the company— 
let them do it “ during these hard times”’! 


“‘ Dives in robes, Lazarus in tatters ; 
Half-starved Lazarus, Dives full fed. 
Dives’ children plump and ruddy, 
Lazarus’ gaunt and pinched for bread. 


“ Dives in a gorgeous palace— 
Guilded ceilings, marble floors ; 
Lazarus lying on his door-steps, 
With the dogs to lick his sores. 


“Let Azs starving children shiver, 
Pinched and blue with Winter’s cold ! 
Mine in furs shall still be mantled, 
And ¢heir pockets filled with gold.” 


Yes, now as in our Saviour’s day ; now, as in the days of 
“ Rome’s proud climax tottering to its awful fall,’ Capital— 
and Christian (?) Capital, as often as that which is called 
Pagan or Infidel—is ‘‘a monster gorged ’mid starving popu- 
lations.” 

In proud Rome, as in many another proud state and city, 
small fortunes were spent on a single meal; and ladies, like 
the famous Leullia Paulina, wore robes covered with pearls 
and emeralds costing a million of dollars; while tens of 
thousands of human beings in Italy and in other lands were 
without daily bread, or even a warm tunic to protect them 
from the winter’s cold. So is it now. See the cartoons, 
read the recitals of poverty, for instance, in recent New York, 
London, Paris, Berlin, daily papers—then walk up and down 
the fashionable avenues in cities and towns all over our land! 
We must acknowledge that shiftlessness, indolence, and vice 
have much to do with it; but not all, not even chiefly :—It 
is for the most part depressing, disheartening wages, and the 
great gulf fixed .between capital and labor—the extremes of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y., 99 


luxury and poverty represented by employers and employ- 
ees—that must bear the guilt and blame. 

The remedy must be some system of co-operative wages 
by which the prosperity of capital shall ensure a proportion- 
ate prosperity of labor—the employer and employee rising 
together as well as falling together. 

Some remaining demands which must be made, favorable 
to the laboring classes, need only be stated. 

3. Christian governments should protect and encourage 
labor by suppressing all syndicates, or other monopolies, 
which exist for the purpose of centralizing capital and con- 
trolling markets. Such are syndicates for the ownership of 
lands; syndicates for the control of manufacturing indus- 
tries; syndicates for speculation in grain, coal, oil, and 
other commodities. As a rule, “syndicates” are only a 
reputable name for gangs of robbers and dens of thieves. 
What can a small farmer, manufacturer, mechanic, merchant, 
or other laborers with little capital do in the face of these 
giant monopolies? They are gradually transforming the 
working classes into slaves and serfs: they can no longer 
produce anything themselves; they must be overshadowed, 
crushed out, and forced to go at the beck and call of con- 
centrated capital. Let the word syndicate and the thing 
which it stands for, become a by-word and a hissing in the 
land, with millions of workingmen’s ballots aimed at its 
vile heart untilit is destroyed. This we say, and pray, in the 
name of the Ever-living Christ—A men. 

4. In every city, town, and village of Christian lands 
governments must establish and control bureaus of indus- 
try,—employment offices, not almshouses,—for aiding em- 
ployees in finding suitable employment ; and, in particular, 
for guaranteeing that work, at reasonable prices, shall always 
and everywhere be furnished to those who cannot secure it 
themselves. Not charity, but work; not alms, but respect- 
able labor, at reasonable prices, is what Christian govern- 
ment must henceforth provide for all able-bodied men and 
women who are in need of it and cannot find it for 
themselves. 


100 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


5. In addition governments must organize and sustain 
such institutions as savings banks, guaranteeing absolute 
security for the small savings of the working classes; which 
must be free, of course, from taxation. 

6. And finally, the working qwomen must demand for the 
same work the same pay as the working man: in schools, 
factories, stores, everywhere. How shall the working 
woman demand this, as she has no vote and almost no voice 
in public affairs? She may demand it zow by her private 
appeals and influence; and ere long, let us hope, Christian 
governments will become so ¢ru/y Christian, that they will 
give and guarantee the ballot to woman, the same as to man. 

But now to sumup. While atheists and anarchists will 
doubtless continue to try and right their wrongs by mobs, 
violence, and revenge—all to their own harm—no one who 
is a Christian or a gentleman—nay, no one who is a humani- 
tarian or a patriot in any true sense—will have anything to 
do with such methods of relief. Zhey will stand by their 
bargains, and be content with present compensations, as 
long as they can. And when they must do otherwise, they 
will seek their ends quietly, leaving vengeance and com- 
pulsion to Almighty God. Trusting ever in a kind and wise 
over-ruling Providence, they will adopt and prescribe peace- 
ful agencies for righting their wrongs—such as agitation, 
legislation, the ballot-box. 

Through these agencies it is now high time to seek 
vigorously the reforms mentioned ; bearing ever in mind the 
workingman’s Beatitude, falling sweetly from the lips of 
him who was The Ideal Working Man—*“ Blessed are the 
peacemakers ; for they shall be called the children of God.” 
The same lips pronounced also the Beatitude which must 
mould the methods, temper the spirit, and direct the life of 
every truly Christian Capitalist or Employer—‘ Blessed are 
the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.” 


XLVII.—‘ FIRST PURE, THEN PEACEABLE.” 


This may be—nay, must be—taken as the Motto, the 
Watch-word, and also as the War-Cry of Renascent Christi- 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANIT VY; IOI 


anity, as it was of original Christianity. Among the first 
utterances, and the most emphatic, of the Divine Founder of 
Christianity was the famous text, ‘‘ Think not I am come to 
send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a 
sword.” The Angel-Cry of Christianity in its first announce- 
ment was, as it now is and ever must be, “Glory to God in 
the highest ; and, on earth, peace to good-willing men.” To 
all others “‘there is no peace’’—never was, never can be. 
“No peace, saith God, unto the wicked !”—“ First pure, 
then peaceable.” 

“ After long intervals of peace, wars ever enter the stage,” 
as truly in Religion as elsewhere. In Church as in State 
applies the sentence of the Puritan preacher,—“ Till the 
Lord hath created his universal and everlasting peace in the 
world, men ought to be in readiness, not only to pray but 
also to fight for the peace of Jerusalem.” 


(a) Purity before Peace; the World must be made Pure 
before it can become Peaceable. 


When Napoleon the First stepped from the top of the 
Alps to the throne of France, grasped the throat of the Rev- 
olution in one hand and drafted his code of French law with 
the other, he supposed that the problem of anarchy was 
solved forever; the ruffian mob held down by force; the 
higher and better inclined citizens held zz by law; the neigh- 
boring powers held of by alliances, treaties, and threatened 
retaliations: this was the First Consul’s solution of the 
problem of peace. But, hardly were his figures concluded 
and his result announced before the “ scarlet robe of France 
began to drip again with human gore’’; all his bonds of 
force, law, and policy were broken; another revolution pro- 
jected him from his throne, and raised again “a bloody- 
fingered Bourbon”’ to his place. Insurrections, upheavals, 
and reactions, in the midst of external prosperity and refine- 
ment,—like frequent eruptions from a volcano whose sides 
are covered with foliage and skirted with flowers,—was for 
the succeeding half-century the history of the French mon- 


102 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


archy and the French republic. Then came a second great 
upheaval, shaking Europe to its centre, filling the civilized 
world with sympathy and alarm; spilling the best blood, 
expending the richest treasures, destroying the noblest 
monuments of the once imperial France; and terminating in 
a“ Reign of Terror,” which almost repeated the horrors 
which succeeded the overthrow of the Girondists under the 
ferocious leadership of Robespierre and his revolutionary 
accomplices. Hardly had we as American citizens begun to 
moralize upon the causes of our recent Rebellion, and to 
consider how to prevent the recurrence of commotion and 
bloodshed in our own country, when that international and 
civil conflict of Germany and France burst like a thunder- 
cloud over Europe. The whole world, Pagan as well as 
Christian, was startled byit. Prussia, though victorious, was 
scathed and scarred and demoralized. And France, the 
champion of nations, foremost in art, superior in science, ex- 
alted in civilization, unrivalled in gayety, polish, and grace; 
built, as her citizens supposed, upon a foundation of ada- 
mant ; adorned, as they believed, with imperishable beauty ; 
surrounded, as they imagined, with defensive bulwarks 
which might defy the armies of the world,—France, as, “‘in 
the twinkling of an eye,” was thrown from her pedestal of 
grandeur; and so marred was her countenance and exhausted 
her strength, that it must even yet be generations before she 
can hope to re-attain her former position of beauty and 
prosperity. 

These and similar events which have been, and are, tran- 
spiring in this last half of the Nineteenth Century are not 
causeless. Neither are their causes, as most men suppose, 
freaks of Nature or mysteries of Providence. They are not 
insoluble, except to those who refuse to study them. Their 
causes are not hidden, except to those who are unwilling to 
search them out. The inferences which they suggest and 
the lessons which they teach are designed to increase wis- 
dom in this and all succeeding generations. They are the 
time-spirited events which, though Sphinx-faced, stand pos- 
tulating truths for humanity to consider, stating problems 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 103 


for humanity to solve, enunciating theories for humanity to 
demonstrate. If humanity wd/ not consider, if the problems 
are unsolved, and the theories unproved,—then will the voice 
which in all the past has been thundering them out, wax 
louder and louder. But whosoever will have courage and 
wisdom to attend, shall deduce magnificent results, and 
receive splendid rewards ; working out, meanwhile, with the 
sureness of the stars, a superb destiny for themselves and 
for human-kind. 


(b) A Truth postulated, a Problem stated, a Theorem 
enunciated. 


Of these “postulated truths”’ let us select one which is 
most important :—Purity before Peace. Of these “stated 
problems” let us present one which is both most difficult 
and most comprehensive :—/zrst pure, then peaceable. Of 
these “enunciated theorems” let us press into the fore- 
ground one which is most practical and fundamental :— 7he 
Church first, and the World second, must be made pure before 
God will permit them to have Peace. Let us state the matter 
concisely and consecutively. 

The most important truth for Church and State alike to 
learn, is, that every human event has a human, as well as a 
divine, cause. 

The most important problem of every age, is, to find out 
what are the causes of tts failures and sufferings. 

The most important proposition which the logic of history 
and the facts of to-day are waiting to prove, is,— 

That the great evil ts, not failure or suffering, but the causes 
of these; and that until these causes are removed, failure 
and suffering will continue to be in the future what they have 
been ever in the past,—both the warning and the lesson, the 
scourge and the balm, the curse and the blessing of mankind. 

One of the most curious facts of history is, that the 
Natural has been so swallowed up in the Supernatural ; 
Human agency, as a correlation of the Divine, has been so 
completely lost sight of; Mankind has been so entirely dis- 
carded as one of the powers, factors, efficient and morally 


104 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


responsible forces of the universe, as practically to transform 
the human race into a complicated machine, all of whose 
clatter and clang, confusion, tangles, breaks, and disasters 
are attributable alone to that Invisible Hand which in the be- 
ginning invented it, set it in motion, and still drives it on. 
Theories have been considered rather than facts. Self- 
conscious freedom, cause and effect, individual volition, the 
fruits of neglect or wrong, the good results of doing good, 
and the ill results of doingill; the praise or blame connected 
therewith, and the lessons of prudence and wisdom to be 
drawn therefrom,—all these facts had been overlooked in the 
intense supernaturalism which has prevailed. Men have 
delighted to “shirk” responsibility, and to “shoulder” the 
blame of all calamity and suffering upon the Almighty. 
When the plague devastated the army of the Greeks before 
the walls of Syracuse, they said, “The gods are fighting 
against us,’”’ but thought nothing of their camps swarming 
with vice and all manner of sanitary neglect. When Sparta, 
Athens, Carthage, Rome, fell, the people said, “ The deities 
are avenging some impiety or some neglected sacrificial 
offering,’ but thought not of the licentiousness and luxury 
which were gnawing at the vitals of their national life, as the 
worm gnaws at the stem of a plant, until both flower and 
branches lie withering upon the earth. When Jesus was 
weeping over Jerusalem, which he saw quaking upon its cor- 
rupt foundation, as a city upon the crater of a volcano, the 
Jews, instead of heeding his warning and “repenting”’ of 
their evils, were praying at the street corners, and offering 
sacrifices in the temple. When the contagion was sweeping 
through Spain in the last century, the citizens of Madrid 
persecuted the “ innovators’? who proposed to cleanse the 
loathsome streets of their dirt and filth, and spent their time, 
meanwhile, in consulting physicians, saying mass, and re- 
peating prayers. 

The language of old Achilles to the assembled Greeks, 
inspired, as Homer represents, by the “ white-armed goddess 
Juno,” may be taken as the universal language of the past, 
in all times of calamity and suffering, — 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 105 


i EEL dre daca al, ea 
“Ye sons of Atreus, here at once 

By war and pestilence our forces waste. 

But seek we now some prophet or some priest, 

Or some wise vision-seer, who may the cause explain, 

Why with such deadly wrath Apollo fires ; 

If for neglected hecatombs or prayers 

He blames us; or if the fat of lambs and goats 

May soothe his anger and the plague assuage.” 


No need to come down to the plagues, diseases, disasters ; 
to the riots, insurrections, and revolutions of which even the 
nineteenth century is full, and which many—calling them 
the “ inscrutable providences of God ”—have been inclined to 
doctor with fast-days, humiliations, and prayer. No need to 
cite instances with which all are familiar, in our own age, of 
both beseeching and blaming Heaven for calamities brought 
on by the most reckless violation of all sanitary, social, 
moral, and humane laws. No need to come so near home, 
or so near the present time for historical illustrations of this 
almost universal tendency on the part of men to “shirk ”’ re- 
sponsibility, and to “shoulder” both the burthen and the 
blame upon God. Happy are we to believe that, though 
this tendency is still strong and prevalent, the increasing in- 
telligence and better common-sense of the civilized nations 
of to-day are beginning to react against this old, old super- 
stition, and by their reaction are drawing men into a moral 
consciousness, both of self-reliance and of self-responsibility. 
Men are beginning in these days to understand what is the 
meaning of that old maxim, “ God helps him who helps him- 
self”; they are beginning to understand that whether there 
be “ God o’erhead ” or not, there is a god of this earth, and 
that god is man himself,—so absolutely its god, that if he 
neglects its control, it will fly into chaos; if he neglects to 
use it wisely for Azs good, z¢ will use him; and, using him, 
will play the tyrant, making him both its victim and its 
slave. In short, men are beginning to learn that there is a 
humanity as well as a “divinity” in all human events, and 
that the “ rough-hewing ”” must be done by humanity, while 
the “‘shaping’’ may be left to the divinity. 


106 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


To worm, fish, and fly a thunder-storm, an earthquake, a 
cyclone is, doubtless, and must remain a miracle. But this 
is no reason why these things should beand remain miracles 
to intelligent men. The more intelligent human beings be- 
come the more natural is everything, zzszde as well as outside 
the Bible ;—the less of freak, fable, mystery, and myth; the 
more of law, order, reasonableness, and naturalness there is 
to the entire Universe, as studied or observed. 


(c) The Causes of Failures and Sufferings. 


When this truth is sufficiently comprehended, men will 
begin to inquire understandingly into the causes of their fail- 
ures and sufferings. 

St. James in the Scriptures long ago answered the ques- 
tion. ‘Come they not hence, even of your lusts?” Ad 
human fatlures and sufferings are a culmination of some 
particular evil, or else result from a complication of various 
evils. This statement will be made more clear by an illustra- 
tion. Hereis a man who is a “ fast liver,’ in the fast sense of 
that term. All his bodily instincts, both natural and artificial, 
are gratified to the utmost ; with full speed he drives along 
the highway of sensual enjoyment. Suddenly he falls sick; 
a council of physicians, after a careful examination, announce 
that it is no disease in particular that ails him, but all dis- 
eases in general,—a complication of diseases, resulting from 
the general and prolonged violation of the laws of health; 
and little can be done except to allow the attack to take its 
course, until it shall terminate either in convalescence or in 
death. So, every failure and every suffering—individual or 
general—is brought on by repeated violations of the laws 
of personal, or social, or physical, or intellectual, or spir- 
itual, well-being. When the paroxysm has once begun, as 
all history shows, you can do but little, except to let it take 
its course, until it terminates either in convalescence or over- 
throw. Not during the failure or suffering, but before it, or 
at once after it, is the time to consider its causes and seek 
their removal. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 107 


We who call ourselves Christians, and Christian nations, 
have “ failures and sufferings” back of us in history—a long, 
dark, disheartening record. And now is the time—if we 
have any wisdom or prudence or humanity left—for us to 
figure profoundly upon that hard old problem, What were 
the causes of those failures and sufferings, and how shall we 
remove them? Thank God, we are beginning to figure and 
to “figure profoundly”’ upon this problem. A few men 
among us have, at least, approximated its solution. Phillips 
and Garrison, in their theories of political reform; Sumner, 
in his statesmanship ; Peabody and Cooper, in their social 
benevolence ; Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, in their 
plans to educate and elevate the masses; and last, but not 
least, an increasing number of liberal theologians, in their 
broad gospels of Renascent Christianity. Such men as these 
have theoretically approximated the solution of the much- 
vexed problem, What are the causes of Christianity’s many, 
long-continued, oft-repeated failures? After nineteen cen- 
turies, why has the Kingdom of God so signally failed to 
come? 

And now if the people who cali themselves Christians can 
only be brought to hear and to heed such teachings, we 
shall have—even during the twentieth century, perchance— 
the “‘ New Jerusalem descending out of Heaven from God,” 
bringing to the world permanent prosperity and enduring 
peace. 

We may not dwell upon this point except to remark that, 
while the causes of failure are manifold, they may be 
grouped into the three following divisions: 

(1.) The ignorance and vice of the masses. (2.) The lux- 
ury, selfishness, and oppression, ecclesiastically and socially, 
of what are called the “upper classes.” (3.) And, princi- 
pally, the time-serving bigotry and intrigue of covetous 
and ambitious rulers, both in Church and in State. These 
are the main styes from which the miasm of all calamity is 
wafted through the Church and the Nations. These are the 
chief fountains whence all the bitter waters flow; and so 
long as these are permitted to remain, the language of Jesus 


108 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


will be the language of every true reformer: ‘“ Think ye 
that I am come to bring peace upon the earth? I tell you 
nay, but a sword.” 


(d) The Sword. 


“ Out of His mouth went a two-edged sword.’’ ‘‘ Repent 
therefore; or else I will come to thee quickly, and will fight 
thee with the sword of my mouth.’’ 


The sword, whether of the hand or of the mouth—of the 
intellect, or of the spirit—is God’s instrument of rebuke and 
medium of reform. It is, at the same time, the bitter drug 
and the sharp blade by which, when all other remedies fail, 
the diseases and wounds of humanity must be healed. Like 
the remedies of those physicians mentioned by Sophocles,— 


“Who bitter choler cleanse and scour, 
With drugs as bitter and as sour,’— 


the sword, when the necessity for it arises, only denotes that 
there is a bitter ‘“choler” back of it, which demands an 
equally bitter remedy in order to its removal. 

One of our distinguished fellow-citizens is reported to 
have said, “If all the drugs of the apothecaries in this city 
were thrown into the sea, it would be better for the health 
of our inhabitants.” If he had included in this rash remark 
all the physicians, surgeons, and nurses, his proposition 
would have been about as wise as is that of those “ peace- 
loving fools,’ who, while all the causes of failures and suf- 
ferings remain undisturbed, pass a wholesale condemnation 
of wilful mischief-making upon agitators and agitations, upon 
reformers and reforms—crying out “ peace, peace, where 
there is no peace.” When all men become wise enough and 
good enough to strictly obey sanitary laws, and when all 
causes of disease are permanently removed, then, but not 
till then, drugs—with those who now make and administer 
them—may be “cast into the sea.” Men talk of beating 
swords into ploughshares, and transforming the metal of 
cannon into church-bells. This may do as a prophecy of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 109 


bright things to come; but asa proposition of to-day, it 
would be as wise to beat the surgon’s knife into knitting. 
needles, or transform the physician’s cruse into a jar for 
sweetmeats. While humanity remains imperfect; at least, 
while ignorance, vice, crime, selfishness, ambition, and irre- 
ligion hold sway in the world, the sword must come. 

Not the sword are we to condemn, Sut tts causes. Here let 
men bestow their curses, offer their opposition, make their 
prayers, pour their tears, and expend their energies! Here 
let the strong arm be lifted and the melting heart poured 
out! Here,—in efforts to elevate the masses, to repress so- 
cial evils, to disarm caste and selfish pride; especially in 
efforts to reform the ballot-box, to straighten crooked judges, 
to exorcise corrupt officials, to regenerate the social life and 
broaden the religious spirit of the people—here is both the 
Thermopyle and the Marathon of Renascent Christianity. 
Here let philanthropists and benefactors lay down their 
lives,—pouring out, if need be, their blood! Here, upon 
the battle-field of truthful words and honest deeds, let 
the “red flowers of martyrdom” henceforth grow! So shall 
the Church militant become the Church triumphant: and 
long-expected, long-enduring peace, like the golden sun of 
morning, with stately and majestic stride shall come walking 
o’er the earth. 


(e) Much to be done—Advancement will be slow. 


But this, all, is prophecy! Long time yet will it be be- 
fore these bright days shall come, because there is so much 
for us to do meanwhile. Nature, in her progressions, never 
“makes a leap.” So is it in the progress of social and of re- 
ligious life; here, as everywhere else, all grand achievements, 
at least all permanent achievements, must be attained by 
hard work in connection with slow and gradual approxima- 
tions. To elevate the masses both in intelligence and vir- 
tue, to break down selfishness and social oppression, to 
cleanse official injustice and intrigue—in Church or in State 
—as all past experience demonstrates, is by no means an 
easy task ; but it is, nevertheless, a task which God has given 


TIO RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


humanity todo. It cannot be done ina year or a century, per- 
haps not in many centuries; but zt must be done ; and human- 
ity, divinely commissioned, must do it, before any Church or 
nation of the earth can permanently enjoy the reign of peace. 
God never does by a miracle for us what he has once com- 
mitted to the industry and prudence of his creatures. One 
might as wisely stand upon the banks of the Mississippi or 
the Amazon, “ waiting for the river to flow by,” as to stand 
waiting for God to establish His Kingdom of Heaven upon 
earth before men have eagerly and fully prepared the way. 
One might as well think to hold back the tide of the ocean 
by throwing in sticks and stones, as to think to prevent sin 
and sorrow in the world merely by offering protests, holding 
conventions, preaching sermons, and repeating prayers. 

You cannot stop contagion in a city whose streets are 
heaped with filth, and whose inhabitants are living in con- 
stant violation of sanitary laws; you cannot prevent pain 
and exhaustion in a body filled with disease; you cannot 
give a virtuous and beautiful exterior to a character which is 
internally corrupt; you cannot quench the lightning while 
the atmosphere is surcharged with electricity; you cannot 
smother Vesuvius with the palm of your hand, or hold back 
Niagara with your finger. No more, while degradation is 
among the masses, while selfishness reigns in society, while 
wrong triumphs in the nation, while bigotry, insincerity and 
oppression hold sway in the Church, can you prevent those 
upheavals and revolutions, those failures and sufferings, those 
sins and sorrows which, now as ever and ever as now, depress 
and curse the world. 


“Not with the burial of the sword, 
Dire war shall cease.” 


Not by beating swords into ploughshares or transforming 
cannon into church-bells, but dy removing the causes of these 
evils, shall be brought to pass that happy time when ‘“ Na- 
tions shall no more lift up a sword against nations, neither 
shall they learn war any more.” Till then, it matters not 
how loud the cry for “ peace,” there can be no peace. Till 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. Ii! 


then, war “must needscome.” Till then, in the language of 
Joel, let men “beat their pruning-hooks into spears.” Or, 
in the language of Jesus, “let him that hath no sword sell 
his garment and buy one,’——xot the sword of the flesh, but 
of the mind and soul, of the heart and lips, and life. 

Such was the Spirit, and such were the demands and 
methods, of original Christianity. Renascent Christianity 
must possess, adopt, and continue the same—until “every 
valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be 
brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and 
the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall 
see the salvation of God.” 


XLVITI.—HINDRANCES. 


Of genuine Christianity, as of genuine Religion of every 
form, there are various prevailing and popular hindrances— 
holding it ever down from its Heaven-born manifestation 
to the world, keeping it ever back from lofty accomplish- 
ments in the interests of Mankind. Of these hindrances the 
main ones may be designated as follows—Mercenary Con- 
formity, Insincerity, Double-tongued Fsotericzsm (or Private 
Interpretation), Hireling-Priests (or Priestcraft), and Conser- 
vatism of Inborn Stupidity. To somewhat assist in “ pre- 
paring the way,” perchance, for Renascent Christianity, 
these five main hindrances are here noticed; and it will be 
excusable if the writer ‘“notices”’ them with sharp, cutting, 
John-the-Baptist rebukes. ‘“‘ Ye generation of vipers! Who 
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 

Behold now the axe is laid at the root of the tree; every 
tree that beareth not good fruit shall be hewn down and 
cast into the fire.” 


1.—Mercenary Conformity. 


“ Fesus answered and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
Ye seck me, not because ye care for the works which I do, 
but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.” 

‘(A certain man named Demetrius . . . who made stl- 


112 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


PN aN Fr ne, ee tea RENEET STENT Tr 


ver shrines for Diana and brought no small gain to the crafts- 
men... said, Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have 
our wealth. . . . And when they heard this . . . all, 
with one voice, about the space of two hours, cried out, Great 
ts Diana of the Ephesians.” 

Such is the spirit of Mercenary Conformity the world over 
and History through. Jesus, like all other Messiahs of God, 
recognized it: and, among his first words to the world, as 
among his last, he declared that every worldly motive, and 
every selfish advantage, must be completely and forever 
renounced by everyone who would becomea Christian. To 
his first disciples he said plainly, If you follow me you 
must leave all; I have nothing to give (but a good Con- 
science), nothing to promise (but the approval of God). 
“Birds have nests and foxes dens but the Son of Man hath 
not where to lay His head. . . . The disciple must not 
seek to be above his Master.’’ Poverty and Persecution are 
mine: you too must be willing to accept them for the King- 
dom of Heaven’s sake—otherwise ye cannot be my disci- 
ples! We are told this was said to the disciples only: 
to the few who were to be the jirst Apostles and Con- 
fessors of Jesus! Not to the world in general, not to us 
especially, was it said! “And there went great multitudes 
with him; and he turned and said to them a//, If any man 
come to me, and is not willing to forsake his father, and 
mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, 
yea, to lay down his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 
And whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, 
he cannot be my disciple.” Thus to a//—to all the world and 
to all times did Jesus speak, rebuking the Mercenary Spirit 
in religion, and affirming that no man coudd, or ever can, bea 
Christian who (however secretly or little) is influenced by 
desire of worldly advantage or hope of worldly gain. 

So, in like manner, have taught and declared all the Holy 
Prophets of all the Religions of the world. From righteous 
Abraham, who left all and went out “ he knew not whither”: 
and devout Moses, who “ forsook Egypt, choosing rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 113 
Ee a eR aloe) 2 Nie 
pleasure of sin for a season”: and sakya Muni, who forsook 
his kingdom and spent a long life in poverty, friendlessness, 
and suffering for the attainment of Holiness and the uplift- 
ing of his fellowmen: and Socrates, who, rejecting bribes of 
large wealth and great public honors, cheerfully accepted a 
Martyr’s death rather than by a word betray Heavenly Wis- 
dom and Virtue. “And what more shall we say? Time 
would fail us to tell” of the prophets, saints, confessors of 
all Religions and ages—women, children, and men, “a great 
multitude whom no man can number ”—who, leaving all to 
follow Sacred Convictions of Truth and Duty, “were tor- 
tured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a 
better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings 
and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment : 
they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, 
were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheep- 
skins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented 
(of whom the world was not worthy): they wandered in 
deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the 
earth.” 

All these, in all the ages to this day,—the martyr-spirited, 
self-renouncing, self-forgetting souls of every Religion and 
time—join with the Holy Jesus to rebuke the Mercenary 
Spirit ; and to affirm and reaffirm the every where-always- 
and-to-everybody-applicable Truth, that Vo man can be a 
Christian (that is an accepted Son of God) who ts (however 
secretly or little) influenced by desire of worldly advantage or 
hope of worldly gain. 

Spite of all this, in these as in all times, Commercialism 
prevails, in Religion as elsewhere. How much will you give 
me? What pay? What advantage? What reward? These 
are first, middle, and last questions: from the minister who 
stipulates for his salary, and the missionary for his stipend, 
down to “the grocer, the baker, and the candlestick maker,”’ 
who profess Religion because it is sore respectable to do so; 
and adhere to the sect or church that promises the largest 
dividends of personal advantage, “ both for the life that now 
is and for that which is to come.” Not @// ministers, mission- 

8 


I1l4 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


aries, and professors of religion are of this commercial 
spirit. Everybody knows of some, in every religion and 
sect of the world, who, utterly regardless of results to them- 
selves, are completely consecrated to Truth and Holiness. 
Everywhere upon the earth can be found some, of every 
religious faith, who (having no “eye to the main chance,” 
no thought of “what people will say,” no care for social 
station, popular applause, or pecuniary reward) are willing 
to live unhonored and die unsung, in humble devotion to 
that which they believe to be God’s command and Human- 
ity’s good. Who cannot recall some with whom they have 
chanced to meet in the various paths of life, who verily 
answered to this description—a ‘“‘ Christian who loves his 
cause well enough to throw into it all that he has; and, not 
deeming that enough, throws himself?” Nevertheless, the 
mercenary spirit prevazls, in Religion, as in everything else. 
Alas! poor Human Nature, in its upward Evolution, is so 
little removed, as yet, from the ox who moves only for 
the lash, and the dog who serves only for the bone. Buta 
man should not remain a brute; he may, perhaps must, szart 
down there; but to wish, or even to be willing, to remain 
there, is shameful, and will degrade him more and. more. 
So Jesus, with all the Lofty and Holy of the world to join 
in his words, says: “If any man come to me, and is not 
willing to forsake his father, and mother, and wife and 
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea to lay down his own 
life also, he cannot be my disciple.’ Notwithstanding 
these Divine words, which have come thundering as well as 
ringing down the ages, the mercenary spirit as prevailed, 
and prevails. ‘“ What will ye give me, and I will deliver 
him to you?” said one of Jesus’ own chosen disciples to the 
rich, fashionable, pious, orthodox Religious Body of that 
day—which called itself the True Church, and despised all 
others.. Centuries later, to a similar Religious Body (which 
for a thousand years had lived and flourished chiefly by 
means of threats and bribes), Henry IV. responded, “A 
crown is worth a mass.” These are two marked illustrations 
out of a multitude that cover-the pages of Christian history 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 115 

is tal Al een eM 
—nothing being said of the greater multitude unrecorded, 
which await the day when the secrets of men’s hearts shall 
be revealed. Henry IV. bid higher than did Judas Iscariot, 
but both alike betrayed their Master, and were Traitors to 
Truth. Mercenary conformity, whether for “a crown,” or 
for “thirty pieces of silver,” or for only “a piece of bread,” 
is always and everywhere Treason to Truth. Truth, whether 
incarnate in a Holy Man (as it was in Jesus), or embodied 
in a Holy Cause, or enunciated in a Holy Proposition, or 
speaking in a Holy Conviction, is as divine as God Himself; 
nay, zs God Himself—‘ The Word made Flesh and dwelt 
among us full of grace and truth.” In these, or in any 
other of the various forms of Truth, whoever knowingly 
betrays it for worldly advantage or for self-seeking aims, is 
a Traitor to Truth. Whoever in any thing, but in his relig- 
ion above all, thinks one thing and (deliberately) says an- 
other, believes one thing and (deliberately) professes another, 
betrays his Christ as basely as Judas did, and deserves that 
Historic Traitor’s infamy and shame. Bribes are everywhere 
proffered. Satan tempts every man as he did Jesus. Bread, 
applause, riches, glory, position, smiles of friends, popularity, 
patronage, prosperity,—these are proffered as inducements 
to conform. As threats against non-conformity, their oppo- 
sites—poverty, reproach, starvation perhaps, domestic Op- 
positions, social criticism; especially Church opprobriums 
and Ecclesiastical anathemas, such as the cry of Heretic, 
Infidel, Atheist, Agitator, Communist, Outlaw, Peculiar, 
Eccentric, Crank! So coax with rewards, or alarm with 
threats, the Devil and his Agencies, now and ever. And 
whoever yields is lost. Whoever would be saved from the 
awful, the “unforgivable Sin” of Mercenary Conformity— 
the Sin against the Holy Ghost, the Ananias-and-Sapphira 
Sin of lying, not unto men, but unto God—must resist to the 
death. As Jesus did, so must he repel all these tempters 
with such words as, “Get thee hence, Devil, for it is written, 
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that 
proceedeth out of the mouth of God. And again it is writ- 
ten, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him alone 
shalt thou serve.” 


116 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


2.—Insincerity. 


The deadliest foe of Truth (whether it be of Science, of 
Philosophy, of Ethics, or of Religion) always has been, is, 
and must be, Insincerity. To say one thing and think an- 
other, to profess one thing and believe another, is, not only 
to betray Truth, but also to build a cross and openly crucify 
Truth upon it. When it comes to that most sacred of all 
forms of Truth, Religious Convictions (the dictates of the 
Holy Ghost, God’s voice in the Soul), what an unspeakable 
crime it is to publicly pervert or openly misinterpret that! 
“Verily I say unto you, all sin shall be forgiven unto the 
sons of men, and blasphemies wherewithsoever they shall 
blaspheme; but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy 
Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal 
condemnation.” 

As to Religious Belief, one xeed not speak, may keep silent ; 
but, if he does speak, by all that is sacred, let him speak 
what, in the most sacred depths of his heart, he honestly be- 
lieves. As to Ecclesiastical Conformity, one need not con- 
form; but if he does conform, by all that is sacred, let him 
conform to nothing that violates his settled convictions of 
what is true and right. As to Theological Creeds, one need 
not profess; but if he does profess, by all that is sacred, 
let him profess nothing (with hand, or posture, or lips) 
that does not correspond with the innermost sincerities of 
his soul. 

Insincerity is the hypocrisy of ‘Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites,” upon which the Divine Jesus poured out all his 
vials of wrath. To him there was, in reality, but ome szw— 
the fertile, fiendish Mother of all sin; and that sin was re- 
ligious insincerity. He called it the sin against the Holy 
Ghost. His chief apostle, St. Peter, said of it, ‘‘ Thou hast 
not lied unto men, but unto God!” Even those who are 
called Pagans have everywhere most bitterly denounced it. 
Everybody may recall those two ines of fire from Homer: 


“Who dares think one thing and another tell, 
My soul detests him as the gates of Hell.” 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. Lb7 


Nothing more heroic and grand, but, also, nothing more 
reproachful to the hypocrite, can be found, in any litera- 
ture, than is the following, translated from the ancient 
Persian : 


“ Ottayd from his earliest youth 
Was consecrated to the Truth, 
And if the universe must die 
Unless Ottaya told a he, 
He would defy the Fates’ last crash, 
And let all sink to one pale ash, 
Or ever from his truthful tongue 
One word of falsehood should be wrung.” 


3.—Esotericism. 


Nothing is more cowardly or more wicked than all this 
talk, imported from Heathenism, and now so much in vogue 
among ‘Orthodox Christians ’’—ministers and the better 
educated laymen—about esoteric and exoteric beliefs—be- 
liefs which one may keep secret, or speak only to an inner 
circle of kindred minds who are practically sworn to secrecy ; 
and beliefs which one may profess and teach in public. 
“ Esotericism ”’ has been the method and the excuse of priest- 
craft, Papacy, and tyranny, as well as of hypocrisy, in every 
religion and in all the ages. Its importation into Protestant 
Christianity (merely to quiet the consciences and save the 
reputations of those who profess to be “‘ orthodox’ when they 
know, and to their secret circles confess, they are not)—is a 
certain sign of degeneration, a growing evidence of reversion 
to Heathenism. 

The cowardice and shame of such a double-tongued 
orthodoxy was what the “ pagan’ Homer, in the lines 
already quoted, so strongly rebuked. But it is more than 
cowardice and shame. It is sin against the Holy Ghost. It 
is “ Lying to God.” It is stifling holy thoughts, smother- 
ing holy convictions, the “ Infanticide of Sacred Beliefs.” 

The truth and nothing but the truth should be sought for 
in the Bible as in all other writings; in religion as in other 
things. And when truth is found it should be openly pro- 


118 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


claimed to the world ; in defiance of personal advantage, of 
popular demands, and even of the threatened wreck of sys- 
tems venerable and strong. The time to give truth to the 
world is whenever the Spirit of Truth gives it tous. Not 
ours to enquire for consequences. Leave consequences to 
Him who rules and overrules! Man’s duty is to do right 
and also to speak the Truth “though the Heavens fall.” 
“What ye hear, that preach ye upon the house-tops,” is 
the commission of Jesus to all who claim to be his disciples. 


“Paid hypocrites, who turn 
Judgment aside, and rob the Holy Book 
Of those high words of Truth, which search and burn 
In warning and rebuke ! 
Woe to such Christians ! Woe 
To those whose hire is the price of blood,— 
Withholding, darkening, changing, as they go, 
The searching Truth of God !” 


‘A glorious ‘remnant’ linger yet, 
Whose lips are wet at Heavenly Fountains, 
The coming of whose faithful feet 
Is beautiful upon the mountains ! 
Men, who the Living Gospel bring 
Of Holiness and Love forever, 
Whose joy is an abiding Spring, 
Whose peace is as a flowing river.” 


The Reverend Make-Believe is, in religion, what the Hon- 
orable Make-Believe is in politics—never a reformer, always 
a caterer. He makes it his business, for zs own peace and 
policy, to suit Truth to the tastes of his constituents—not to 
demand (as he ought to) that his constituents shall cultivate 
and adapt their tastes to Truth. 

“Lift up your voice like a trumpet and cry aloud, spare 
not,” and proclaim the Word of God to men, “ whether they 
wtll hear or whether they will forbear.’ This is the old, the 
new, the everlasting command of God. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. IIgQ 


4,—Priest-Craft or Hireling-Priests. 


“ And tt shall come to pass, that every one that ts left 
in thy house shall come and crouch for a piece of silver and 
a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into 
one of the priests offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.” 

Since penning this quotation from the Book of Samuel, 
the daily newspaper has been read and from it extracted the 
following: 

“Many After This Pulpit.” 


“Tt is said that the official board of the Church, in 
Street, near Madison Avenue, has received more than 
two hundred applications from pastors of Churches located 
in cities and towns in the vicinity of New York city since 
the resignation of the last Pastor.” 

Were this a rare report it might be passed without partic- 
ular notice. But similar ones are so common as to excite 
the sorrow and shame of all who revere that Apostolic 
Christianity, the only cry of whose Ministers was, ‘‘ Woe is me 
if 1 preach not the gospel’; whose only glory was the “ Cross 
of Christ’; and whose only boast, ‘“‘ I have coveted no man’s 
silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know that 
these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to 
them that were with me.” 

We learn from every source and from all over the Chris- 
tian World that the scramédle for place, and pay, and fame, is 
as great among the Clergy as it is among the Politicians. 
The same methods are resorted to—Advertisements, Per- 
sonal Presentations, Wire-pulling, Diplomacy. 

In addition to this eager place-hunting, consider the lux- 
urious living, and mountain, seaside, across-the-continent, 
across-seas, over-Europe, and around-the-world Tourings-for- 
Pleasure of most of those who have the large salaries, the 
high places, and “ who seem to be pillars!’ Contrast all this 
with the camel’s-hair raiment, the seamless coat, the thread- 
bare cloak, the coarse sandals, the empty wallet, the roofless 
homes, the scant food, the long pedestrian journeyings, and 
the ceaseless preaching of the Gospel in every place and 


120 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


every day, “ without money and without price,”—with only 
the Heavenly Compensation of unceasing persecutions of 
men and the unfailing approval of God—which characterized 
Christianity as Jesus and his Prophet-Priest predecessors 
and successors established it! Prophet-Priests and Hireling- 
Priests—what a contrast! To be sure “the people love to 
have it so”: for the vzch supporters of vzch Churches, as 
a rule, demand soft words and “smooth things” now as 
ever. Ease, luxury, and comfortableness they z2// have, in 
their Churches as in their homes; no Clergyman is accepta- 
ble who will not provide them with this, and they are willing 
to pay him his price. Alas, that the supply should be 
greater than the demand—two hundred-fold greater, some- 
times, as the Newspapers and Church Officials report! 
Where the Churches are not already rich and “ fashionable,” 
their main desire, as a rule, seems to be to become so. 
Answering to this demand the Hireling-Priest makes it his 
first object to secure money for a jfimer edifice in a more 
centrally located neighborhood. His next object is—as a 
sort of auctioneer—to sell, to let, or to otherwise f// the 
Pews. This secured, he becomes—like all other smooth- 
tongued, oily-mannered Priests whom the “ Scribes and Phari- 
sees, hypocrites,” patronize and approve! Our picture does 
not single out azy one Congregation or Priest. Our garment 
is not made to order. But wherever the reader of these 
pages sees the resemblance, let him smite it! Wherever the 
garment will fit, let it be put on! 

The “great evangelist” of orthodox Protestantism says 
many true things—when he lets Theology and the Bible 
alone—and says them wondrously well. Among recent true 
and well said things the newspapers report the following: 

“The trouble is we have too many man-sent men, and 
some of them are devil-sent.” 

“Tam tired of silver-tongued people. I have been going 
around Christendom for years, and I never found one of 
these silver-tongued preachers who amounted to anything.” 

‘““The way in which the fashionable and popular Clergy- 
men chase the Devil out of their Churches, reminds me of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y, 121 


the way I once saw dogs chasing swine out of a field—the 
dogs were ahead, and kept so far ahead that the swine were 
none of them in sight.” 

The Prophet-Priest—like the true Physician of the body, 
the true Reformer, Patriot, Scholar, each in his department— 
has but one desire and aim ; which is, to cure permanently, to 
render vital and sound. The Hireling-Priest—like all other 
Charlatans and Quacks—seeks only to give present relief; 
and so ministers with soothing words, hypnotic gestures, 
narcotic rituals, somnolent dogmas, and anodynous creeds— 
anything, everything—within the bounds of reason—that his 
parishioners or patrons may ask, and Ge welling to pay well for ! 


Rich-Parishioner— Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in 
shape like a camel?” 

Hireling-Priest—“ By the mass, and ’t is like a camel indeed.” 

Rich-Parishioner—* Methinks it is like a weasel!” 

Hireling-Priest—* It is backed like a weasel.” 

Rich-P arishioner— Or like a whale!” 

Hireling-Priest—*“ Very like a whale.” 


The Hireling-Priest is not by any means always found in 
the Azgh stations; but he zs always aiming to get there. If 
conscious of inferior talents—of diplomacy,—and of un- 
favorable environments—lack of influential patrons,—he 
will, for the nonce, be satisfied with a “piece of bread.” 
For a mere livelihood—if he can get no more—well sea- 
soned with flattery and applause, he will, for a while, be 
content to mildly say that white is black and that black is 
white. Or, if not quite so submissive, he will compromise 
the matter by saying that white is only a pleasant aspect of 
black and black only an unpleasant aspect of white. But, 
not long, is he content with an humble position and small 
pay. His ideal is, to secure—by hook or crook—a rich and 
“fashionable ” parish ; with a “ magnificent ” church edifice, 
an imposing and “enriched ” service, a “ snug” salary with 
large “ perquisites,” a “comfortable” parsonage or rec- 
tory; and—what is sure to come with these—with male 
parishioners to take him on excursions and invite him 


122 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


frequently to dine, and with devoted ladies to embroider his 
slippers and—if he be a Ritualist—to make and adorn his 
many-colored Vestments. Nor does his ideal end here. It in- 
cludes, besides, the hope of soon being called “‘ Rabbi, Rabbi,” 
by receiving the title of Doctor of Divinity for his name; 
and the aspiration, some day, to secure even the chief office 
of his sect or church—Chairman, President, Ruling-Elder, 
Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal, or Pope. Again we say: 
Our picture does not single out any one individual of any one 
Religion. Our garment is not made toorder. But wherever 
the reader of these pages sees the resemblance—whether in 
the Buddhistic, Moslem, Jewish, or Christian Priest—let him 
rebuke it! Whoever the garment will fit, let him put it on. 
And we may be sure of the fi¢tzng and the resemblance when- 
ever we hear a Priest angrily or bitterly condemning them. 

Not to one age, religion, or sect alone, but to every 
age, religion, and sect applies the pathetic and reproach- 
ful exclamation of the brave Prophet-Priest, Jeremiah— 
“A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. 
The prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by 
their means; and my people love to have it so: and what 
will ye do in the end thereof?” 


THE VOICES.* 
Hireling-Priest— 
“Why urge the long, unequal fight ? 
Truth’s lamp les trampled in the street ! 
Why lift anew the flickering light, 
Quenched by the heedless millions’ feet ?” 


Prophet-Priest— 
“T’ll do my work ; it shall succeed 
In mine or in another’s day ; 
And, if denied the victor’s meed, 
I shall not lack the toiler’s pay.”’ 


Hireling-Prtest— 
“ Give o’er the thankless task: forsake 
The fools that know not ill from good ; 
Eat, drink, enjoy thy own, and take 
Thine ease among the multitude.” 
* See special acknowledgement on page g of opening pages. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT ¥Y, 123 


Prophet-Priest— 
“My meal unshared is food unblest ; 
I hoard in vain what love should spend ; 
Self-ease is pain; my only rest 
Is labor for a worthy end.” 


Lfireling-Priest— 
“Live for thyself ; with others share 
Thy proper life no more; assume 
The unconcern of summer air 
For life or death, for blight or bloom.” 


Prophet-Priest— 
“Free-lipped the liberal streamlets run, 
Free shines for all the healthful ray ; 
The still pool stagnates in the sun, 
The lurid earth-fire haunts decay.” 


fTireling-Priest— 
‘““Thy task indeed seems over hard, 
Thou scatterest in a thankless soil ; 
Thy life, as seed, has no reward 
Save that which duty gives to toil.” 


Prophet-Priest— 
“ Faith shares the future promise ; Love’s 
Self-offering is a triumph won ; 
And each good thought or action moves 
The dark world nearer to the sun.” 


Hireling-Priest— 
“ The world is God’s, not thine; let Him 
Work out a change—if change must be; 
The hand that planted, best can trim 
And nurse, the old, unfruitful tree.” 


Prophet-Priest— 
‘“‘ Break off Love’s sacred chains! Turn 
On myself my thought and care! 
Myself mine own mean idol! Burn 
Faith and Hope and Charity there ! 


I24 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“© God! let us Thy servants dare Thy Truth in all its power 


to tell; 

Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear the Bible from the grasp of 
Hell ! 

From hollow rite, and narrow span of Law and Sect, by Thee re- 
leased, 

O teach us that the Christ-like man is, everywhere, Thy holy 
priest. 

Chase back the shadows, gray and old, of the dead ages, from 
our way ; 

And let our hopeful eyes behold the dawn of Thy Millennial 
Day,— 


That day, when fettered soul and mind shall know the Truth 
which maketh free, 

When he who Christ-like serves his kind shall, Child-like, claim 
the love of Thee.” 


5.—The Conservatism of Inborn Stupidity. 


“ Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, 
Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, 
prophesy decetts.” 

This is the fifth of our ‘“ main hindrances” to Renascent 
Religion of every sort, but to Renascent Christianity in par- 
ticular. 

“Inborn” traits or defects are not to be blamed so much 
as regretted. We must exercise great forbearance toward 
them, and yet point them out and patiently seek to reform 
them. Every aspiring, progressive, mind and soul knows 
what an almost hopeless obstacles in the path of advance- 
ment the Conservatism of Inborn Stupidity is, and how dif- 
ficult to deal with. Everything has a use, we are assured ; 
but the use of this is one of the deep mysteries. The 
famous Rev. Dr. Chapin used to explain it, in his lecture 
on Columbus, thus: ‘ The Conservatism of Stupidity was 
probably permitted as a block upon the wheels of Reform ; 
but still the mystery remains—why such a multitude of 
conservative blockheads are needed!’ They are found 
everywhere, always, and in every department of human 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 125 


life. They are officials as well as constituents, representa- 
tives as well as patrons, priests as well as people. 

Their further characterization and reproof let us leave to 
the following quotations—one from a recent edition of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church Standard, and the other from 
the closing book of the New Testament : 


“THE POWER OF DULNESS.”’ 


“ There is a certain power and weight in dignified dulness 
which the prudent man will consider. 

‘There is nothing more unsafe than brightness. The man 
who sees clearly and speaks clearly, the bright, bold, alert 
man, whose mind works rapidly, is a very unsafe man. The 
world is always suspicious of him. He has new ways of 
looking at things, new ways of saying things. He startles 
and annoys people. His reasoning may be very clear; his 
conclusions very conclusive; his method bright and to the 
point; but his clearness and precision, and brilliancy of 
comprehension and statement, are against him. 

“The general average of humanity does not see clearly, 
nor think clearly, nor express itself clearly. It is a very 
muddled affair generally. If it is to be taught and influ- 
enced, it must be on its own ground. It has the conviction 
that muddle and confusion are the normal state of things. 
It is very suspicious of the man who undertakes to disen- 
tangle the confusion, and bring precision out of the muddle. 
It resents his pretence that anything can be clear which is 
not clear to itself. It pronounces him ‘an able man, perhaps 
a brilliant man, but an wzsafe man.’ 

“Tt turns with a sense of relief from him and his ways to 
the safe timidity, the decorous dulness, the dignified and 
solemn heaviness of respectable commonplace, which dis- 
turbs nobody, and against which not a word can be said. 

“In the pulpit perhaps there is nothing that at times has 
greater influence. When decorous and solemn common- 
place occupies that position, and gravely confines itself to 
large round platitudes, it is a positive relief to a man of ner- 
vous temperament. He can close his eyes and go to sleep 


126 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


quietly, satisfied that when he wakes everything will be as 
he Jeft it. There is a sense of serene rest and calm, asifa 
man were removed from all the turmoil of the wicked world, 
when he can incline his head at a comfortable angle, and let 
the round and balanced sentences lull him to his rest. 

‘““We entered once, awhile since, a church which shall be 
nameless. The pew backs were very high. They were well- 
cushioned. The preacher stood in a thing shaped like a 
giant’s wine-glass. There were seventy-five heads before 
him, exclusive of our own, all gray or bald. These seventy- 
five heads just appeared above the backs of the pews, 
clothed in their venerable gray crowns of glory, or shining 
in their bareness, where sermons by the hundred had hit and 
glanced off to the next pew. The venerable heads were 
calmly reposing in that sweetest of all sleeps since infancy— 
a Sunday sleep in a well-stuffed pew—all except perhaps a 
half dozen whose consciences or ledgers kept them awake. 
It was only at rare intervals that a noise, as of one in an un- 
easy dream, disturbed the solemn cadences of the preacher. 

‘‘Hewas preaching on the duty of reading a chapter in 
the Bible every day. It was a thoroughly safe subject, and 
he handled it in a thoroughly safe way. The sentences 
were all round and well finished after the approved pattern, 
and they rolled out with a full and musical intonation, as if 
the speaker enjoyed the sound of his admirable voice. Evi- 
dently he was ‘ the right man in the right place,’ a man of 
weight and influence, a thoroughly safe man, to whom those 
dignified gentlemen could intrust the preaching of the Gos- 
pel in ¢hezyv church, satisfied that all was well, while ‘drowsy 
tinklings lulled the fold.’ It was a touching sight to see the 
quiet confidence those world-weary men reposed in their 
chosen shepherd ; with what infantile simplicity they dropped 
to rest, as if each one said, ‘ The doctor is preaching. It is 
all right. He will go through that manuscript in a way to 
command any man’s confidence and respect. We can go to 
sleep like lambs while “e guards the sheep-fold.’ 

“To be sure it is only fair to say that sometimes there 
come crises in social and political life which set all rules at 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. L27. 


defiance, and your dull man looks on with a dazed and im- 
becile look in his glassy eyes which is really tragical and 
pitiful. There is need of something more than dulness 
then, or things go very badly. But as soon as the crisis is 
over, dulness assumes its ancient worship, and clothes itself 
in all its primeval dignity. 

“ In literature the influence of dulness is not given, we are 
sorry to say, its due consideration. Readers are getting 
into a bad habit of impatience with it. They have been 
known to condemn it, and speak bitterly and sarcastically 
about it—to resent it almost as a personal injury. This is 
the case in general literature, however. Religious literature 
has not thus cast off all regard for the past, and abandoned 
itself to new-fangled ways. 

“The religious book, or the religions publication, being in 
some sort akin to the sermon, retains still due respect for 
dignified and solemn dulness. It is read as a duty, some- 
times as a penance perhaps, and the reader resents any 
attempt to render his toil lighter or his penance less pene- 
tential. He wants to go in the old respectable and decorous 
path and the ponderous periods of a grave discussion, pon- 
derously involved and elaborated, have a great weight with 
him. They sound very magnificent and learned, and, at all 
events, are thoroughly safe; and his religious book or re- 
ligious newspaper must first of all be safe. ‘ Whatever is is 
right,’ must be their motto. The same venerable straw 
must be threshed over again and again with the same regular 
and grave beat of the wooden flail. The writer must not 
disturb his reader with any subject on which there is a dif. 
ference of opinion, or with any view or any question later 
than his venerable great-grandfather. 

‘““We know religious papers, for instance, which owe their 
weight and consideration, and both are considerable, to the 
fact that they never had an opinion and never will have; 
that they never expressed themselves on any matter on 
which there is greater doubt than on the propositions that 
‘honesty is the best policy’ and ‘ virtue is its own reward’ ; 
whose secret of influence is the owl-like gravity and highly- 


128 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


respectable dulness with which they repeat Mother Grundy’s 
oracular utterances to an over-awed world. So, as we have 
taken the liberty to say, he is a very thoughtless man who 
underrates the high position which dulness holds in the 
minds of men, or the dangers and the failures of bright- 
ness. 

“We cannot ourselves see why the pulpit should be dull, 
why religious books should be unreadable, why religious 
newspapers should be stupid. We do not see the connection 
between piety and owliness, nor understand why necessarily 
brightness should be condemned as hostile to religion. 

“But though we cannot see the subtile bond of connec- 
tion, we recognize the fact.” 


“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans 
write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true 
witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy 
works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou 
wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and 
neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. 

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous there- 
fore, and repent.” 


“‘ Now too oft, the priesthood wait at the threshold of the great,— 
Waiting for their beck and nod ; servants of men, not of God. 
Fraud exults, while solemn words sanctify its stolen hoards ; 
Slavery laughs, while ghostly lips bless his manacles and whips, 


“Not on them the poor rely, not on them looks liberty, 

Who with fawning falsehood cower, to the wrong, when clothed 
with power. 

O, to see them meanly cling, round the master, round the king, 

Sported with, and sold and bought,—pitifuller sight is not ! 


“Tell me not that this must be: God’s true priest is always free ; 

Free, the needed truth to speak, right the wronged and raise the 
weak. 

Not to fawn on wealth and state, leaving Lazarus at the gate,— 

Not to peddle creeds like wares,—not to mutter hireling prayers,— 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 129 
a 
“ Nor to paint the new life’s bliss on the sable ground of this,— 
Golden streets for idle knave, Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 

Not for words and works like these, priest of God, thy mission is ; 
But to make earth’s desert glad, in its Eden greenness clad.” 


XLIX.—PREFATORY EXPLANATIONS AND TOPICAL CON- 
TENTS OF THE NEW EDITION OF ANCIENT SACRED 
SCRIPTURES OF THE WORLD. 


The Prefatory Explanations and Topical Contents of 
the new edition of Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World 
(which may be found in that volume) were prepared and 
inserted for two reasons: One, that they might furnish 
suggestions as to methods of Translation, of Expurgation, 
of Correcting, and of Compiling, to students in general, of 
Higher Criticism of the Bible and of Comparative Religion. 
The other, that by their very faults and defects—as initial 
and novel efforts—they might stimulate wiser and more 
effectual attempts on the part of others in the interests of 
Renascent Christianity. The author of these Prefaces and 
Contents claims no superior scholarship, and assumes the 
possession of no extraordinary intellectual or spiritual in- 
sight. He simply has felt that certain things in the interests 
of Higher Criticism and Comparative Religion Studies 
needed to be said and done; he has waited long for others 
to say and do them in both a reverent and a radical spirit— 
which, in these enlightened times, is the only spirit in which 
they can be effectively said and done. After many years 
of waiting—with scoffing Radicals on one hand turning the 
Bible and all Religions into ridicule, and orthodox Con- 
servatives on the other making them still more ridiculous to 
all who are zutelligently reverent or reverently intelligent— 
he could no longer resist the sense of duty that impelled him 
to open efforts for the renascence of Christianity and of its 
Holy Book, however bitter the criticism or severe the con- 
demnation he might thereby draw upon himself. 

“Let me perish, but let Truth survive.’ Whatever re- 
proach or loss may result to himself, the Truth-lover irre- 
sistibly must be a Truth-speaker. “J cannot otherwise. 
God help me.” 


130 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Pas asc se DMP ineaNaie Roma NR SE 

From the first this has been the Compelling Spirit of 
genuine Christianity. Its Divine Founder made it the clos- 
ing and climax of his Beatitudes: © Blessed are ye, when 
men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner 
of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be 
exceeding glad; for so persecuted they the prophets which 
were before you.” 

He himself was Truth-compelled even to the Cross and 
the Sepulchre. “ / have not spoken of myself ; but the Father 
which sent me, He gave me a commandment what I should 
say, and what I should speak.. I have given you an example 
that ye should do as I have done.’’ And all his disciples, ex- 
cept Judes Iscariot who betrayed him, did as he had done. 

“ But that it spread no further among the people, let us 
straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no man 
in this name. 

“ But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether 
it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than 
unto God, judge ye. 

“ For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen 
and heard. 

“And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto 
thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word.” 


L.— A MODERN PROPHET-PRIEST—SKETCHED AS A 
MODEL. 


“He was despised and rejected of men.” 


He was friend and benefactor, though in less signal 
ways perhaps, to many other churches besides his own ; in- 
deed, he was a sort of Bishop in its best sense, a Shepherd 
in its genuine New Testament sense, of all Churches in 
America. Not one ever appealed to him for counsel or help 
in vain ; his sympathy, his words, his efforts were with all; 
freely offered, nay gladly, eagerly offered. So heart and soul 
and head and life consecrated to his cause was he, that no 
Macedonian cry, “Come over and help us,” ever fell un- 
heeded upon his ear. For nearly half a century he came and 


* Chiefly from ‘‘ What is the Bible?” and ‘‘ The Man Jesus,” and “ The 
Religion of Evolution.”—By special permission. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 131 
altace See Ma OAL OY ES a el Ca al Rec 
went, with his richest thoughts, his devoutest efforts, his 
deepest and purest love—sacrificing his home comforts, 
spending his money, risking his health; heedless indeed of 
everything but ¢fat which he might help or zhose whom he 
might bless. 

His whole ministerial life might be called an uninterrupted 
Labor of Love. And, as was fitting, a “labor of love” 
ended his life. For, called to a distant city of the West, 
to speak in advocacy of his cause, and also to preach the 
dedication sermon of a new church, neither his age, nor his 
bodily infirmities, nor the severity of the weather, nor the 
length and weariness of the journey withheld him; but, asin 
his earliest days, he left his home and went, discharged, with 
even unwonted inspiration and grace, the duties there laid 
upon him; and then, stricken with disease, returned—to die. 

Of him was true what long ago Homer sang of his never- 
yielding, never-resting hero : 


“Whose soul no respite knows 
Though years and honors bid him seek repose. 
But now the last despair surrounds our host, 
No hour must pass, no moment must be lost.” 


Not only his own bereaved church in New York, but also 
all Churches of America owe tributes of affection and grati- 
tude to his most precious memory. 

In his varied labors, his wide and numerous circles of inter- 
course, he had gained a host of personal friends. It is im- 
possible that one should be both loved and admired more 
intensely and more sincerely than was he, by those who en- 
joyed the rare privilege of his acquaintance and friendship. 
He had the wondrous faculty without deceitfulness, flattery, 
or pretense of seeming to be the particular friend—the most 
particular friend—of each one of his friends; so that he was 
unaffectedly a father, a brother, nay even a lover, to every 
one who knew him well. 

The author’s acquaintance with him began when a student 
at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in the city of 
New York. He chanced to drift into his church one morn- 
ing and was at once drawn in admiration toward him; 


132 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ee ee eee 


chiefly, because his appearance and manner were so striking- 
ly similar to those of the venerable President of Williams 
College—from which institution he had just graduated — 
who, up to that time, had been the most paternal and sym- 
pathetic, as well as most majestic, manly, and scholarly of all 
the preachers the author had enjoyed the privilege to know 
or to hear. Very soon a personal acquaintance was sought. 
The young student was received warmly, taken into his 
fatherly counsels, adopted, as it were, into his family, drawn 
to his heart and held there, more and more closely, until the 
hour of his death. What he was to one he was to many 
others of the younger clergymen. - All who knew him clung 
to him as a wisest, dearest friend—even as the sons of the 
prophets in ancient times clung to Elijah. And when he 
was parted from them and carried up out of sight, they all 
stood gazing after him and exclaiming, “ My father, my 
father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof.” 
Many there are who can join in thus testifying to the honor, 
excellence, integrity, genius, and worth of this bishop of so 
many churches, this shepherd of such a multitude of souls. 
One of his own distinguished parishioners,—whose charac- 
ter no doubt was very largely shaped, and whose sen- 
tences and songs were, in some measure at least, inspired by 
the eloquent teachings, the sublime influences, the sweet, 
pure, and beautiful examples of his life-long pastor and 
friend, sang of all good and noble men in general, but pro- 
phetically of this good and noble man in particular— 


* Let the light 
Stream on his deeds of love, that shunned the sight 
Of all but Heaven; and in the book of fame 
The glorious record of his virtues write 
And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 
A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame.” 


When Jesus said of the approaching Nathaniel: “ Behold 
an Israelite indeed,” he doubtless meant to say, Behold a 
man!—a true, well-endowed, well-balanced, and well-de- 
veloped specimen of manhood. Such aman in any age Is 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 133 


rarely found, and when found he attracts the attention and 
wins the admiration of all who observe him. 

Now and then there appears a man who seems to be a god 
descended to earth in human form—so large is his pattern, so 
majestic his endowments, so superior his developments of 
body, mind, and soul. It was tosuch as these that Napoleon 
the First referred when he exclaimed, “ How rare are men! 
in all Italy I have found only two.” 

It was to such as these that Shakespeare referred when he 
said, 

“ But thou, O thou 
So perfect and so peerless, art 
Created of every creature’s best.” 
And again, 


“ There ’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.” 


It was to such as these too that Pope referred when he 
said, 
“°T is not a lip, an eye, we beauty call, 
But the joint force and full result of all.” 


When a man answering to these descriptions appears 
among men, so rare an apparition is he that there is no won- 
der he becomes at once a sort of divinity, whom all delight 
to honor and revere. It is simply the homage which man- 
kind pays, and rightfully pays, to typical or ideal manhood. 

We have been told that Mr. Gladstone, who, for a half 
century nearly, has above all others been admired, almost 
adored, by his fellow-citizens of Great Britain, is a man of 
this peerless pattern and mould,—every inch a man, which 
is much higher praise than to say “ every inch a king.” 
And those who have known them both well, have said that 
this “Modern Prophet-Priest,’ though moving in quite a 
different sphere, was the Gladstone of America—if not of 
the American people, certainly of the American pulpit. 
Though a preacher instead of a statesman, he was neverthe- 
less every inch a man, as all who saw him much or heard him 
sympathetically hastened at once to acknowledge. Nature 
had endowed him, to begin with, not only with a “sound 


134 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


body,” but also with a noble, graceful, commanding form 
and figure; with a massive head, an intellectual brow, a 
winsome as well as intelligent and penetrating eye, a coun- 
tenance soft and serene but capable of expressing the wrath 
of Mars or the indignation of Jove, a voice, as musical asa 
harp and as gentle as a purling stream, but adapted also to 
the swelling anthems of his thoughts and the sending forth 
of his occasional thunderbolts of argument or rebuke. 
Seen upon the streets, or in whatever promiscuous crowd, 
the observing eye would at once single him out as a superior 
man. To look in his face was.both to love and to fear him; 
and to listen to the accents of his voice was to know that 
there was authority back of it—the authority both of a 
great heart and of a giant mind. 

Such were the rare physical or mechanical endowments 
with which Nature had generously furnished him; and no 
one could know better than he how to use them to their 
best advantage—to their most efficient and excellent results. 

In this sound and noble body dwelt a correspondingly 
sound and noble mind; indeed the body was only the mould 
in which the mind had cast itself—the coarser, less beau- 
tiful and less perfect outer image of his own inner self. 

“The mind is the measure of the man”; but you can 
take, or at least begin to take the measure of the mind from 
the shape, outlines, and expressions of its materialistic 
mould, its physical representation, the body. And no one 
who knew this Prophet-Priest even a little, much less they 
who knew him well, could fail to be convinced that his body 
was no mask or disguise, but as perfect an exhibition as flesh 
and blood could give of the personality within. The‘ word”’ 
made flesh and dwelling among us full of grace and truth. 

Intellectually, he was not what is called a profound mind; 
which generally means narrow and deep. But he was well- - 
balanced, many-sided, comprehensive, broad; and also deep 
enough for the seeds of wisdom and thought to take root, 
to be well nourished, and to grow mightily and beauteously 
to the bringing forth of abundant fruit. And this, as all 
history and observation show, is the manly type of mind— 


7 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 135 
te Nh i Serht AAS A NEA SEAT RE TD EM PRUE LRT fel RT 
the type of those who have been and are, in the highest 
sense, the thinkers, teachers, and leaders of the world. 

He had a thorough classical education to begin with, grad- 
uating while yet almost a boy from Harvard University. 
Afterwards he studied theology with an open mind and a 
free range of inquiry and of thought—tied to no essential 
creed, anchored to no pre-determined set of doctrines, 
pledged to no system, school, or sect, responsible to no one 
but to God, and caring for nothing but to seek, and find, 
and know, and do, God’s truth and will. Thus studying, 
with all books wide open before him, with all good and wise 
men as his teachers, and with his own conscience as his own 
and only monitor, he laid firmly and broad the foundation 
not only for his professional career, but also for that many- 
sided culture, that wide-reaching wisdom, that everything- 
appropriating, all-comprehending intellectuality which fitted 
him well to be what he finally was—a teacher of teachers 
in almost every department of thought, and a leader of 
leaders in almost every social, industrial, charitable, politi- 
cal, and educational, as well as ecclesiastical department of 
activity and life. 

His was a splendid mind; and, by contact with the world 
in a hundred ways, by wide, various, and intimate relation- 
ships with men and women of all stations and nations, as 
well as by classical culture and the wisdom of books, he had 
been educated widely and well. His superior, with reference 
to versatility of education, in its best sense, could not be 
found. He was at home on all subjects, was posted on all 
topics, was fully prepared both to appreciate and to com- 
municate wisdom with reference to almost everything. He 
was no specialist—deeming it necessary to know only one 
thing in order to know it well; but rather deeming it essen- 
tial to know many things, nay, so nearly as possible, to know 
everything in order to know even one thing of importance, 
as it ought tobe known. Thus, not “narrow and deep,” but 
broad and comprehensive was his education—a true, effec- 
tive, manly education. Manly endowments, character, and 
culture he was possessed of to almost a miraculous degree. 


136 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


But all the virtues have never yet been granted to any one 
man; a portion has always been withheld from each, as a 
sort of “thorn in the flesh,” lest, as Paul said, they should be 
exalted above measure. Though not a “saint” in the sense 
that we may apply that word to some who have lived, he 
was certainly a saintly man; though not possessed of miracu- 
lous spirituality he was always and in all things spiritually- 
minded. All his springs were in God. He was rooted and 
grounded in the faith of Jesus Christ. His conversation was 
in heaven, in all holiness and godliness; and in his everyday 
practice, as well as in his preaching, the kingdom of God and 
His righteousness were ever foremost and supreme. 

The pathos of devotion that marked his prayers, his ser- 
mons, his ordinary conversation even, running like a current 
of inspiration through every sentence, through every word, 
indicated that in his innermost soul was a closet of prayer, 
with closed doors, wherein he uninterruptedly communed 
with the Father who seeth in secret and rewardeth openly. 

Theologically speaking he was not an angel with one wing, 
as so many of the “angels of the church” always have been 
and are. He was not radical to the exclusion of conserva- 
tism, nor conservative to the exclusion of radicalism; he 
was not a skeptic to the exclusion of belief, nor a believer 
to the exclusion of skepticism; he was both—radical and 
conservative, a believer and a skeptic. The two organs of 
his brain, “‘ destructiveness” and ‘‘ constructiveness”’ seem 
to have been harmoniously and equally developed, so that 
there was nothing partial, one-sided, or incomplete about his 
religious convictions or theories. He possessed the rare 
faculty of discrimination ; of being able not only to detect 
error and to reject it but also to discover the truth and to 
conserve it. This is why to extremists on both sides he 
often seemed inconsistent; now, from some utterance in 
which he pointedly criticised or discarded an error, the ex- 
treme radical would claim him for his side; again, from some 
utterance in which he zealously defended some ancient 
method or truth, the dogmatic conservative would claim 
him for his side; and when he refused, as he always did, to 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 137 

a re ert a ee eS Ee en 
be counted in on either side, both would join to condemn 
him as illogical, inconsistent, unreliable. “To which of these 
religions do you belong? To all, because all combined con- 
stitute the true religion,” said Goethe in his Wilhelm 
Mester. This is what our prophet-priest was always 
saying; and because the dogmatists—both radical and con- 
servative—could not comprehend him, they charged him 
with poor logic, inconsistency, unreliableness. They looked 
only upon one side of the shield, he upon both sides; they 
considered only one phase of the star or the planet, he all 
phases. Then too, he understood well, and practised well, 
what Goethe in another place says—“If you have got any 
faith, for God’s sake give me a share of it; but your doubts 
you may keep to yourself, I have plenty of my own.” His 
skepticism he reserved like a hidden instrument for the 
secret workings of his own mind; his faith, positive and sin- 
cere, was all that he felt called upon to give public or pro- 
miscuous expression to. Results, not processes; ends, not 
means; the refined gold and not the alloy, or the methods 
of refining were the stock in trade of all his pulpit teachings, 
of all his public instructions and ministrations. No better 
illustration of this prime characteristic of all his theology 
and theological methods could be cited than that furnished 
us in one of the last sermons that he preached, and the very 
last that was printed—the sermon entitled “ Christianity 
Unchanged,” preached a few weeks before his decease at 
the dedication of a church in St. Louis. We may quote 
here two or three selections from it, though the entire ser- 
mon is needed in order to furnish a complete illustration :— 
“ Be sure, then, it is really upon its merits that Christianity 
rests. If it had not maintained that ground all other kinds 
of evidences would long ago have broken down. Let its 
enemies crowd together and pile up the proof of the incon- 
sistencies, infirmities, persecutions, dogmatic extravagances 
and incredible opinions, or indefensible usages of the his- 
toric church, and make of them as ugly and awful a heap as 
they can. It only redounds more to the strength of the 
constitution of Christ’s religion that it has borne these sick- 


138 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


nesses and survived the weight of these burdens, and the 
sorrow of these tears, and comes down to us, in spite of the 
perversities of its ignorant or imperfect supporters, its rash 
interpreters, its unreasoning: ado, in the purity and 
power with which it survives.’ 

“There are too many glorious and Renee traditions of 
the church universal; too many saints and martyrs; too 
many signs of divinity in its hymns and prayers and festi- 
vals, in the mystic faith hid often in its harsh creeds; in the 
meekness and patience and loving kindness of the Christian 
saints and apostles of the past,to make it anything less than 
a dangerous impoverishment of spiritual wealth to dis- 
sever the hereditary connection with and direct descent from 
the freest modern Christianity and its historic ancestry in 
the Church of Christ.” 

‘Christianity is even greater, diviner and richer—surer in 
its sway than its loudest champions suppose. They encum- 
ber it with assumptions, bolster it with defences, deform it 
with claims it neither owns nor needs. If anyone can con- 
ceive or anticipate the appearance of a spirit holier, lovelier, 
or more spiritually illumined than Jesus, or one whose ex- 
ample, temper, faith, heroism, could be fitter to elevate and 
guide the moral and spiritual fortunes of humanity, he may 
expect with reason a new revelation and a new religion. 
But the universe must be rich indeed if it holds another soul 
like his. Meanwhile, we cling confidently to the hem of 
his garment. He is the nearest to God the holiest history 
has handed down. The instincts of civilization have crystal- 
lized about him. The church is the setting of the jewel 
that sheds its lustre far beyond its frame. But let us pro- 
tect and strengthen the setting, and not disown it if it bear 
some marks of the antiquity in which its earlier efforts were 
made; for it holds up before new generations the splendor 
and glory of the one name that has hitherto had power to 
hold the reverence and confidence of the race, and to whose 
pre-eminence, and rightful honor, and mastership, we can 
see no end. Therefore, we in the midst of modern light, 
and children of reason, sons of progress, do from our 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 139 
corpeehaaltinil scant 4 oc tl le ELLA el bl al ile i te PLE RDS 
heart of hearts call him Master and profess our unfeigned 
faith in his teachings, and in the Church he planted.” 

Turning from the general to the more particular and per- 
sonal there are a few special delineations of his grace and 
worth that we may make. Who that has ever been a cuest 
in his home, or had him asa guest in their homes, can soon 
forget the charm and the cheer that emanated from and sur- 
rounded his personality! It was like the mellow radiance 
or the soft glow of a summer morning ;—the birds began to 
sing, the flowers to open, the valleys to smile, the hills to 
dance, the trees to murmur their gladness, the floods to clap 
their hands, the heavens and earth, and all nature to rejoice 
as soon as his beaming face appeared, or his tender voice, 
with its always warmly welcoming, affectionately solicitous, 
love-inspiring and love-compelling greetings, fell upon the 
ear. Nor is this a mere rhetorical figure of personal and 
perhaps extravagant admiration; it is the exact experience 
of everyone who has ever spent a day in his home, or had 
him asa guest for one day in theirs. Now and then there isa 
person of that rare calibre and gift that literally carries sun- 
shine everywhere ; no darkness but that recedes, no sorrow 
but that vanishes, no burden but that falls, no tear that is 
not dried, no sigh that is not changed to singing, no pessi- 
mism that does not become optimistic, hopeful, and glad in 
the presence of such an one. “Did not our hearts burn 
within us as he talked with us by the way and sat with us 
at meat?” said the two disciples of Emmaus when, their 
eyes being opened, they found they had entertained an 
angel unawares. What heart-burnings of purity, wisdom, 
hope, and gladness have we not experienced, in common 
with all who ever walked by the way with this modern 
prophet-priest, or sat with him at meat! The grace of his 
manner, the tenderness of his words, the wisdom of his 
speech, the immaculateness of his ideas and ideals ; together 
with the inspiration of his eye, the expressiveness of his 
countenance, and the wonderful eloquence of his eloquent 
tongue—the combined effect, who can forget it, or fail to be 
forever wiser, purer, and happier on account of it ! 


140 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


‘He was only with us one night,” said the father of a 
family not long ago, ‘“‘ but he left in our home an atmosphere 
of sweetness and purity which the children as well as our- 
selves did not cease to recognize and enjoy for weeks and 
months thereafter.”” How many heads of families not only 
all over America, but also in various parts of Great Britain, 
France, Switzerland, Germany, where at different times he 
travelled, and was invited or received as a guest, would 
gladly testify to the same beautiful, almost divine influences 
left behind in their homes like the lasting perfume of flow- 
ers, or the odor of sweet-smelling incense—cassia, spikenard, 
and myrrh, very costly and very precious! This personal, 
domestic, and social influence and inspiration, so widely 
spread and long continued, was by no means the least im- 
portant outflow, benediction, or blessing of his life. It was 
moreover the basis of all his public, the fountain-head of all 
his professional ministrations; he carried the same well- 
rounded, many-sided, to-all-and-to-everybody adapted per- 
sonality with him wherever he went. Chief among equals 
was he, as well as chief among inferiors. He was the chief 
organizer, counsellor, director, and inspirer of his own Chris- 
tian denomination, throughout the entire forty years of his 
public ministry; and that by common consent, not by his 
own election or choice. And so it was that hardly nowhere, 
from Maine to California, could a church edifice be dedicated, 
a pastor installed, a convocation called, or an assembly held, 
without his presence being solicited and his leadership if 
possible secured. 

He was always the recognized leader. He was captain of 
the craft, always at the wheel, always on the watch; and at 
the same time was the “ placidum caput’ above the tem- 
pestuous waves, ever to rebuke their violence and reduce 
them to acalm. A natural born leader was he, spontane- 
ously chosen and unanimously recognized, not only in the 
church but also in every department of life to which 
his activities were given. The Sanitary Commission, the 
the most splendid charity of our age, he organized, and, asa 
historian has said, ‘was not only its parent, but also its 
never-flagging spirit and its daily slave.” Time would fail 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, I4t 


to speak of the charities, the industries, the humanities, the 
reforms, in church, city, and nation, which he organized, or 
helped to organize, and became the heart and soul of. In 
everything that he attempted the advocacy or advancement 
of he was, or soon became, by the persistent wish and will 
of all, tZe man. 

As a reformer, in church, society, or state, one sentence as 
applied to him may express it all, ‘‘ Nobility is insensibility 
to opinion.” He invariably sought not the praises of man, 
but the praise of God; and though no man could be more 
tender of the feelings of others than was he—as tender as 
the fondest mother of her dearest child—yet such was his 
loyalty to Truth and Right, that he spared the feelings of 
no one; nay, mortified, wounded, crucified his own feelings, 
if circumstances required, in order to stand by what his 
intellect assured him was true, or to defend what his con- 
science pointed out as right. From his pulpit, and from 
whatever position, public or private, he assumed, in other 
language he continually exclaimed—“Aloft on the throne of 
God, and not below in the footprints of the trampling multi- 
tude, are the sacred rules of right, which no majorities can 
misplace or overturn.” And this is why he was never the 
preacher, teacher, or leader of the masses; was never in 
any way or sense, what we call popular. His head and his 
heart, his intellect and his conscience, his theories and his 
principles were too lofty for the masses to reach; and he 
was too God-like, for the sake of mere popularity, to aban- 
don them and come down. 

It is without doubt providential that among the teachers 
of the world, especially among religious teachers, both intel- 
lect and conscience are so graded as to constitute a sort of 
Jacob’s ladder, whose bottom rests on the earth but whose 
top at the same time touches Heaven. Upon the upper- 
most rounds of this ladder stand a few of God’s most highly 
favored and endowed, whose mission it is to take directly 
from Him revelations of truth and duty and hand them 
down to a succession of less highly favored and endowed, 
grade by grade, until at length they reach the earth. In 
their transmission they become, of necessity perhaps, per- 


142 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


haps providentially, less and less heavenly,—more and more 
of the earth, earthy ; so adapting themselves to the less and 
less heavenly, more and more earthy-mindedness of the dif- 
ferent grades of teachers and of men; until finally, 2 some 
diluted form, they reach and are received by the masses. 
The preachers, teachers, leaders of the masses must of neces- 
sity be more or less like the masses, of the earth, earthy. 
“From that time many of his disciples went back and 
walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, 
will ye also go away?” 

This modern Prophet-Priest- was one of the chosen few, 
one of the Anointed of God, whose station is appointed to 
them upon the topmost round of the ladder of Heavenly 
Revelation. To desert that station and come down would 
be not only to leave a gap in the line, but also to debase 
and degrade the sublime endowments wherewith God has 
providentially, and for providential purposes endowed them. 

Why did he not resort to the tricks and devices of the 

ministerial trade, to fill his church, Sunday after Sunday, with 
an applauding multitude! Why did he consent patiently, 
nay even submissively, to speak his best words—which, to 
those who had ears to hear them, were the words of ‘God’s 
highest angels—much of the time to half-filled pews; or even, 
at times, as did Jesus at the well of Samaria, to a single lis- 
tening auditor? Why did not he, endowed as he was with 
so large a measure of the wisdom of Plato, the eloquence of 
Demosthenes, the piety of David, the faith of Paul and the 
tender, glowing heart of love of the Master himself—why did 
not he, thus endowed, grow envious of some of the great 
congregations which thronged the churches about him, and 
enter the list as a rival of ministers whose name and fame 
were upon everybody’s lips ? 

“Then the Evil One taketh him up into an exceeding 
high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the 
world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, all these 
things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship 
me; and Jesus said unto him, get thee hence, Satan ; for it 
is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him 
only shalt thou serve.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 143 


He loved men and the approbation of men, but he loved 
God and the approbation of his own conscience far better ; 
this is why he did not, why he could not descend to become 
either the idol or the mouth-piece of the masses. He knew 
that it was his mission to bea teacher of teachers ;—to teach 
and charm those who were to teach and charm others, which 
others were in the end to teach and charm the multitude; 
and true to his mission he was; though all his life long it 
caused him to stand comparatively deserted, and at times— 
with God—alone! And yet, what a band of the very elect, 
small in numbers though it was, he gathered and held ever 
about him. 

New York city directly, and indirectly New York state, 
and all the states in this union of states, owe more, in intel- 
lectual, moral, social, and political influence, of the highest 
leadership and type, to the past half-century’s personalities, 
words, and works of the congregation of the church of which 
this Prophet-Priest was pastor—than to any other half-dozen 
churches combined in New York city or Brooklyn, we may 
venture to affirm. 

Distinguished names might be mentioned as confirma- 
tions, and many facts might be adduced to strengthen the 
confirmation ; such as the leadership which he himself and 
his prominent parishioners had, and have, ever bravely 
assumed and persistently held, over almost every organiza- 
tion, project, or movement which had in view the radical 
remedy and reformation of public affairs. 

The Sibyl of ancient times wrote her prophecies on the 
loose leaves of trees, and made the winds her messengers, to 
bear them everywhere. Such, not in fable but in fact, is the 
influence which this modern Prophet-Priest exerted for more 
than forty years upon his city, his country, the world. 

May similar priests—similar in spirit and method if not 
in endowments and power—in ever increasing numbers— 
arise to lead and feed the flock of Christ, and to hasten on 
that Renascence of Christianity which shall be a glorious ful- 
filment of his prophecy, who said, ‘‘ There shall be one fold 
and one Shepherd.” 


144 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


LI.—OUR RECENT PROPHET-BISHOP—-SENTENCES SELECTED 
FROM HIS SERMONS. 


“T shall grow so that I shall be able to understand vastly 
more of what God is and of what He is doing. God also 
will be ever doing new things. . . . Therefore each year 
grows sacred with wondering expectation. . . . Beready 
for any overturnings, even of the things which have seemed 
most eternal, if by these overturnings God can come to be 
more the King of His own Earth . . . A universal 
Commerce is creating common bases and forms of thought. 
For the first time in the history of the world there is a mani- 
fest, almost an immediate possibility of a untversal religion. 
: Our ordinary life so hangs fast in the dull middle 
regions of conventional propriety and selfish expediency, that 
it becomes, not the fountain, but the grave of individuality. 

Let us put aside everything that hinders the highest 
from coming tous. . . . He who takes any new word of God 
completely gets both a new truth and a new duty—zs continu- 
ally seeing new truth and accepting the duties that arise out 
of it. . . . Oh, if you could only know two things about 
yourself: first, that you are a different creature from any 
that the world has ever seen; and second, that you area real 
utterance of the same Spirit of Life out of which sprang 


TIsatah and St. John. . . . God has been here, and God 
is here still. . . . That miracles have ceased is a sign of 
increasing spirituality. . . . Itis not for us to catalogue 
and inventory Deity. . . . Oh, in this world of shallow 


believers and weary, dreary workers, how we need the 
Holy Spirit! The power of the Holy Spirit—an everlast- 
ing spiritual presence among men! What but this is the 


thing we want? . . . Insist on having your soul get 
at God and hear His voice. . . . Be profoundly honest. 
Never dare to say, . . . through conformity to what 


you know you are expected to say, ove word which 
at the moment when you say it you do not belteve. 

Seek great experiences of the soul, and never turn your 
back on them when God sends them, as He surely will. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 145 


Kevelation is not the unveiling of God, but a@ 
changing of the veil that covers Him. For man to accept 
the pattern of his living absolutely from any other being 
besides God in all the universe would be for him to 
sacrifice himself and lose his originality. . . . Because 
no other being ever was or ever will be just the same as you, 
and because precisely the same conditions never before 
have been and never will be grouped about any other mortal 
life as are grouped around yours, therefore for you to do and 
be what you, with your own nature in your own circumstances, 
ought, in the judgment of the perfect mind to do and be, that 


is originality for you. . . . There is an Atheism which 
still repeats the Creeds—a belief in God which does not let 
fim come into close contact with the every-day life. . . , 


Many who call themselves Theists are like the savages who, 
in the desire to honor the wonderful Sun-dial which had 
been given them, built a roof over it! Break down the roof ; 
let God into your life. . . . This has always been true, 
that the new tdea has been born of the old,—not by flinging 
their nets out into the heavens in hopes to catch a star, but 
by digging deeper into the substance of the earth on which 
they stood, and finding there a root. . . . And that is 
what we have to look for in the future. You and I cling 
to the old historic statements of our faith. . . . What 
is our feeling as we hold fast there? We stand expecting 
change and progress, new truth, new light. . . . We 
believe that the new truth must come out of this old truth, 
the perfect truth out of this partial truth, some day. 
Only he who consents to enlarge his own conception of the 
possibilities of faith with God’s can calmly watch the ever- 
lasting growth of Revelation and see the old open into the new. 
To discriminate between the eternal substance of 
Christianity and its temporary forms; to bid men see how 
often forms have perished and the substance still survived; 
to make men know the danger of imperfect and false tests 
of faith, and to encourage them to be not merely resigned 
but glad as they behold the one faith ever casting tts old forms 
away, and by its undying vitality creating for itself new— 


146 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


that ts to open wide the great gates of the Divine Life, and 
make the way more clear for the children to their Father. 
Every new experience is a zew opportunity of knowing God. 
Every xew experience is like a jewel set into the texture of 
your life, on which God shines and makes interpretation and 
revelation of Himself. You hang a great rich dark cloth up 
into the sunlight, and thesun shines on itand shows the broad 
general color thatisthere. Then, one by one, you sew great 
precious stones upon the cloth, and each one, as you set it 
there, catches the sunlight and pours it forth in a flood of 
peculiar glory. A diamond here, an emerald there, an opal 
there; the sun seems to rejoice as he finds each moment a 
new interpreter of his splendor, until at last the whole 
jewelled cloth is burning and blazing with the gorgeous 
revelation. . . . A much-living life is like a robe that 
bursts forth of itself to jewels. They are not sewn on from 
the outside. They are born out of the substance of that life 
as the stars are born out of the heart of the night. And God 
shines with new revelation upon every one.” 


“We cannot kindle when we will 
The fire which in the heart resides, 
The Spirit bloweth, and is still— 
In mystery our soul abides : 
But tasks in hours of insight will’d, 
Can be, through hours of gloom, fulfill’ d. 


“With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, lay stone to stone ; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day and wish ’t were done. 
Not till the hours of light return 
All we have built do we discern,” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 147 


LII.—A MODERN PRKOPHET-BARD.* 
Appropriate Selections. 


“To us have Prophet-Bards of old, 
Their deep and constant sorrows told ; 
The same which earth’s unwelcome seers 
Have felt in all succeeding years. 
Sport of the changeful multitude, 
Nor calmly heard nor understood, 
Their song has seemed a trick of art, 
Their warnings but the actor’s part. 
With bonds, and scorn, and evil will, 
The world requites its prophets still. 


So was it when the Holy One 

The garments of the flesh put on! 

Men followed where the Highest led 
For common gifts of daily bread, 

And gross of ear, of vision dim, 
Owned not the godlike power of Him. 
Vain as a dreamer’s words to them 

His wail above Jerusalem, 

And meaningless the watch He kept 
Through which his weak disciples slept. 


Yet shrink not thou, whoe’er thou art, 
For God’s great purpose set apart, 

Before whose far-discerning eyes 

The Future as the Present lies! 

Beyond a narrow-bounded age 

Stretches thy prophet-heritage, 

Through Heaven’s dim spaces angel-trod, 
Through arches round the throne of God! 
Thy audience, worlds !—all Time to be 
The witness of the Truth in Thee!” 


“Our common Master did not pen his followers up from other 
men : 
His service liberty indeed, he built no Sect, imposed no Creed ; 


* See special acknowledgement on page g of opening pages. 


I4o RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


But, while the boasting Pharisee made broader his phylactery, 

As from the synagogue was seen the dusty-sandalled Nazarene 

Through ripening cornfields led the way upon the awful Sab- 
bath day, 

His sermons were the healthful talk that shorter made the 
mountain-walk, 

His wayside texts were flowers and birds, while mingled with 
his gracious words 

The rustle of the tamarisk-tree and ripple-wash of Galilee. 


“With noiseless slide of stone to stone, the mystic Church of 

God has grown. 

Invisible and silent stands the temple never made with hands, 

Unheard the voices still and small of its unseen confessional. 

He needs no special place of prayer whose hearing ear is every- 
where ; 

He brings not back the childish days that ringed the earth with 
stones of praise, 

Roofed Karnak’s hall of gods, and laid the plinths of Philx’s 
colonnade. 

Still less He owns the selfish good and sickly growth of soli- 
tude ; 

Dissevered from the suffering whole, love hath no power to 
save a soul. 

Not out of Self, the origin—but, out of Others saved from sin, 

The living waters spring and flow, the trees with leaves of heal- 
ing grow.” 


“ T ask no organ’s soulless breath to drone the themes of life and 
death, 
No altar candle-lit by day, no ornate wordsman’s rhetoric- 
play, 
No cool philosophy to teach its bland audacities of speech 
To double-tasked idolaters, themselves their gods and worship- 
pers, 
No pulpit hammered by the fist of loud-asserting dogmatist, 
Who borrows for the hand of love the smoking thunderbolts of 
Jove. 
I know how well the fathers taught, what work the later school- 
men wrought ; 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 149 


I reverence old-time faith and men, but God is near us now a 
then ; 

His force of love is still unspent, his hate of sin is imminent ; 

And still the measure of our needs outgrows the cramping 
bounds of creeds ; 

The manna gathered yesterday already savors of decay ; 

Doubts to the world’s child-heart unknown question us now 
from star and stone ; 

Too little or too much we know, and sight is swift and faith is 
slow ; 

The power is lost to self-deceive with shallow forms of make- 
believe. 


“We walk at high noon, and the bells call to a thousand oracles. 
I lay the critic’s glass aside, I tread upon my lettered pride, 
And, lowest-seated, testify to the oneness of humanity. 

He findeth not who seeks his own, the soul is lost that’s saved 
alone. 

Not on one favored forehead fell of old the fire-tongued mira- 
cle, 

But flamed o’er all the thronging host the baptism of the Holy 
Ghost ; 

Heart answers heart ; in one desire the blending lines of prayer 
aspire ; 

‘Where, in my name, meet two or three,’ The Christ hath said, 

‘TI there will be!’ 


“So sometimes comes to soul and sense the feeling, which is 
evidence, 
That very near about us lies the realm of spiritual mysteries. 
The sphere of the supernal powers impinges on this world of 
ours.” | 


THE ANSWER. 


“True Worship’s deeper meaning lies in mercy and not sacrifice, 
Not posturing of penitence, but love’s unforced obedience. 
The Book and Church and Day are given for man, not God,— 

for earth, not heaven. 
The blessed means to holiest ends, not Masters are, but helping 
friends ; 


150 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


And the dear Christ dwells not afar the King of some remoter 
star,— 

Listening, at times, with flattered ear to homage wrung from 
selfish fear :-— 

But here, amidst the poor and blind, the bound and suffering 
of our kind, 

In works we do, in prayers we pray, life of our life, he lives to- 
day.” 


“What care I that the crowd requite 
My love with hate, my truth with lies? 
’T is but to Faith, and not to sight, 
The walls of God’s true Temple rise! 


“T ’ll faint not, falter not, nor plead 
My weakness: Truth itself is strong : 
The lion’s strength, the eagle’s speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong. 


“My nature, which, through fire and flood, 
To place or gain may fight its way, 
Hath equal power to seek the Good, 
And Duty’s holiest call obey. 


“So, haply, when my task shall end, 
The Wrong shall lose itself in Right, 
And all my week-day darkness blend 
With that long Sabbath of the Light.” 


“ Grown wiser for the lesson given, I fear no longer, for I know 
That, where the share is deepest driven, the best fruits grow. 
The outworn rite, the old abuse, the pious fraud transparent 

grown, 
The good held captive in the use of wrong alone,— 


These wait their doom, from that great law which makes the 
past time serve to-day ; 
And fresher life the world shall draw from their decay. 


“Take heart !—the Waster builds again,—a charméd life old 
Goodness hath ; 
The tares may perish,—but the grain is not for death. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. “ ak 


“ God works in all things ; all obey His first propulsion from the 
night : 
Wake thou and watch !—the world is gray with morning 
light !” 


“ Blow, winds of God, awake and blow 
The mists of earth away ; 
Shine out, O Light Divine, and show 
How wide, and far we stray ! 


“Our friend, our brother, and our Lord, 
What may thy service be ?— 
Not name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But, simply following thee. 


“No fable old, nor mythic lore, 
Nor dreams of bards and seers, 
No dead fact, stranded on the shore 
Of the oblivious years ; 


“ But warm, sweet, tender—even yet 
A present help is he, 
And faith has still its Olivet, 
And love its Galilee. 


“ The letter fails, and systems pall, 
And every symbol wanes : 
The Spirit, over-brooding all— 

Eternal Love remains.” 


“If ye have precious truths that yet remain 
Unknown to me, Oh teach me them! Each way 
Into my soul I open wide, that they 
May enter straightway, and belief constrain. 

But urge no fear of loss, nor hope of gain— 
Hell’s terrors, nor Heaven’s joys—to essay 

To force my soul’s belief, or quench one ray 

Of inward Light ! such self-born faith would pain 
The Holy Ghost within—who asks assent 

Not even to simplest truths until the hour, 
Arrives of their belief-constraining power.” 


152 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


‘“‘T have not seen, I may not see, 
My hopes for man take form in fact ; 
But God will give the victory 
In due time; in that faith I act: 
And he who sees the future sure, 
The baffling present may endure ; 
And bless, meanwhile, the Unseen Hand that leads 
The heart’s desire—beyond the halting step of deeds.” 


“O loving God of Nature! Who through all 
Hast never yet betrayed me to a fall,— 
While following Creeds of men I went astray, 
And in distressing mazes lost my way : 
But turning back to Thee, I found Thee true, 
Thy love unchanged and fresh as morning dew,— 
Henceforth on Thee, and Thee alone, I rest, 
No warring sects shall tear me from Thy breast. 
I doubt no more, nor trust in man-made creeds : 
Thy Light I trust, and follow where it leads.’’ 


“O friends, with whom my feet have trod 
The quiet aisles of prayer, 
Glad witness to your zeal for God 
And love of men I bear. 


“T trace your lines of argument ; 
Your logic, linked and strong, 
I weigh as one who dreads dissent, 
And fears a doubt as wrong. 


“ But still my human hands are weak 
To hold your iron creeds; 
Against the words ye bid me speak, 
My heart within me pleads. 


“Who fathoms the Eternal Thought ? 
Who talks of scheme and plan ? 
The Lord is God! He needeth not 
The poor device of man. 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANITY: 153 


“ T walk with bare, hushed feet the ground 
Ye tread with boldness shod ; 
I dare not fix with mete and bound 
The love and power of God. 


‘“O brothers, if my faith is vain, 
If hopes like these betray, 
Pray for me, that my feet may gain 
The sure and safer way ! 


“And thou, O Lord! by whom are seen 
Thy creatures as they be, 
Forgive me if too close I lean 
My human heart on Thee !”’ 


LIII.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFERENCE 
TO JESUS-WORSHIP AND MARIOLATRY. 


The most emphatically quoted and enjoined of all Old 
Testament Scripture, by Jesus as also by all New Testament 
writers, was, ‘ The first and great commandment” which for- 
bids, as idolatry, all qworshzp offered to any other than the 
one and only God. Who this one and only God is, Jesus 
constantly explained as Our Father or The Father. ‘Then 
saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan; for it is written 
Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt 
thou serve. . . . God is spirit; and they that worship 
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. : 
The true worshippers shall worship the Father. . . . The 
Father seeketh such to worship Him: ..).. When ye 
pray, say Our Father.” All Old Testament worship was of 
The One God Jehovah alone; and all New Testament wor- 
ship was of the One God the Father alone. And yet the 
masses of Protestants to-day worship Jesus almost to the ex- 
cluston of the Father, even as the masses of Romanists 
worship the Virgin and the Saints almost to the exclusion of 
both Jesus and the Father. Jesus-Worship is the popular 
worship in all the ‘Orthodox ”’ Protestant Denominations as 
Mary-Worship is in the Roman Church. Both alike, and 


154 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


— 


equally, are idolatry; both are reversions to Heathenism. 
Praying 12 the name of—‘ Calling upon the name of’’—Je- 
sus, or of Mary, or of any real saint; reverencing, admiring, 
adoring one, or all, of these is one thing. Worshipping 
them, praying zo them, confusing or confounding them 
with the Father—The One and Only God—whom alone men 
are commanded to worship and taught to pray to, this is quite 
another thing. The former is Scriptural and reasonable ; 
the latter is unscriptural, heathenish, idolatrous. 


Corrective Quotations. 


‘‘ T]l-informed persons are apt to suppose, that the disciples 
were accustomed to worship their Master as God, even while 
he lived familiarly among them in Galilee and Jerusalem—a 
conclusion utterly unfounded and untenable. Thus we read, 
‘Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children, wor- 
shipping him.’ The word used in this and other such cases 
does not denote religious worship, but only the respectful 
salutation or obeisance which one person might offer to an- 
other, probably by prostration in the oriental manner. This 
may be clearly seen from a parallel expression in the same 
Gospel, relating to the unforgiving servant and his, lord: 
‘The servant, therefore, fell down and worshipped him say- 
ing, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.’ 

““We have in these cases examples of the old and well- 
known meaning of the English word ‘worship ’—that is all. 
The Greek verb strictly and exclusively denoting religious 
worship is a different word, and this is never applied to 
Jesus. It will be found that in no instance was Jesus the 
object of religious worship during his lifetime. Even after 
his resurrection, when it is said that his disciples saw him 
‘and worshipped him,’ the word used is the more general 
word, expressive of respectful and reverent salutation. An 
excellent illustrative example occurs in Genesis xxxvii. 6, 
where the sheaves are said to have ‘made obeisance’ to 
Joseph’s sheaf. The word thus rendered is, in the Septua- 
gint version of Genesis, expressed by the same Greek word 


12 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 155 


which, in the English N. T., has been so often and so indis- 
criminately rendered ‘worshipped,’ as applied to Jesus and 
other highly respected persons in common. 

“Of any other kind of worship than this being offered to 
Jesus there is no trace anywhere in the New Testament. 
We know that it was a charge brought by the Jews against 
the Christians in later times, when probably the worship of 
Jesus was growing up into an established practice. It is 
impossible that it should not have been brought forward by 
the bigoted enemies of the early Christianity, had fitting 
occasion been afforded to them. But there is no trace of it 
in the Book of Acts, or in any other book of the New Tes- 
tament. The inevitable inference is, that during the first 
century such a charge was not thought of, and could not be 
made, in the face of the fact that the disciples did mot speak 
of Jesus Christ as God, nor pay him religious adoration. 

“When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said nothing 
about the adoration or worship of himself. Hetold them 
to say, ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ He even said to 
them that, after he was gone from them, they were to ask 
him nothing, but to ask the Father in his name. He said 
to the woman of Samaria in clear and precise terms, which 
it might be thought that no one could misunderstand or ex- 
plain away, that ‘the true worshippers shall worship the 
Father in spirit and in truth.’ In the Book of the Acts we 
find a prayer of the disciples recorded, and to whom is it 
addressed? ‘They lifted up their voice to God with one 
accord and said, Lord, thou art God, which hast made 
heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is.’ It 
is unnecessary to quote more, for it is evident to whom the 
prayer of the assembled disciples was here offered, and that 
it was in no sense to Jesus Christ. Similarly, on the even- 
ing before his crucifixion, Jesus himself, according to the 
fourth Evangelist, prayed and said, ‘Father, the hour is 
come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. 

And this is life eternal, that they might know 
THEE, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast 
Sontag 


156 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


‘““ Wherever, in short, there is any clear statement in the 
New Testament as to the prayers or the worship of the first 
Christians, it is always to the same effect. It is in no case 
Jesus that is addressed. The great Object of religious wor- 
ship is everywhere God, the Heavenly Father, even ‘the 
God and Father of Jesus Christ.’ 

“It was nearly two hundred years before that peculiar 
development of Christianity, since known as Jesus-Worship, 
reached predominance, at and through the Council of Niceza. 
But such an advance as this, or anything like it, can nowhere 
be seen within the limits of the New Testament. Let any 
one compare the abundant and varied evidence of the wor- 
ship of Jesus found in hymns and liturgical forms of the 
time of Tertullian in the third century—let any one com- 
pare and contrast that with the total absence of everything 
of the kind from the Christian books. It requires nothing 
more to show that the worship of Jesus, like that of the 
Virgin Mary, was the growth of a long period of time, and 
of a credulous and superstitious period. It requires nothing 
more to show how highly unjustifiable, on Scriptural grounds, 
is the modern practice of the Churches of uniting Jesus 
Christ in an equal offering of worship with Him ‘who is 
above all,’ whom Jesus himself habitually worshipped, and 
whom, even in the fourth Gospel, he is recorded to have ad- 
dressed in prayer as ‘the Only True God.’ 

“When the grand hereditary truth of Judaism, which is 
transmitted to Christianity, was lost sight of in the third and 
fourth centuries of our era, polytheism and idolatry in new 
forms sprang up forthwith, and multiplied with rapid in- 
crease through the whole medieval period. First, the Son, 
then the Virgin Mother, and at length countless hosts of 
saints and martyrs, rose into the rank of Deity, and were 
invoked with fervent prayers—the last personage so exalted 
being usually the most popular object of worship; till, 
finally, at the altars which filled the churches before the 
Reformation, the name of the Father Himself was never 
heard. 


* 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 157 


—— 


LIV.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFERENCE 
TO CONCEPTIONS OF THE HOLY GHOST. 


The common conception of the coming and presence of the 
Holy Ghost has reverted and degenerated from that lofty 
one found in the Bible to something like the following :— 
The God-Family from all Eternity consisted of three Per- 
sons. These three kept close and continual companionship 
until the necessity came for one to go and try to save the 
fallen and perishing Human Race. The second Person of 
the Trinity offered to go and remain on Earth thirty-three 
years; the third Person, meanwhile, to remain with the first 
Person to help Him, and to keep Him company. This 
“scheme” was accepted and fulfilled :—with the understand- 
ing, however, that, when the “ expiatory work” was done 
and the “body of flesh and blood” brought back, by the 
second Person, into Heaven, “there forever to dwell,” the 
third Person would be spared to go and complete the “ Re- 
demptive Scheme.” Hence it came to pass that, about forty 
days after the Ascension of the second Person, came the 
Descension of the third Person,—As first appearance upon 
frarth. The second Person has, ever since, “remained at 
the right hand ” of the first Person “on High”; while the 
third Person has been trying to carry forward the redemptive 
work of Mankind. On the “Day of Pentecost” the Holy 
Ghost descended for the first time; before that day no one 
had ever “received the Holy Ghost”; since that, all who 
believe on Jesus as an “ Atoning Sacrifice” and are baptized 
with water in the Triune Name—and none others—also 
“receive the Holy Ghost.” That this is not travesty—much 
less scoffing or ridicule—let any intelligent and honest per- 
son prove by listening to the preaching, teaching, and wor- 
ship in the “ orthodox ” Churches of all denominations and 
names. In five out of six he will probably gain this as the 
popular conception. 


Correcting Quotations. 


“Our English words Ghost and Spiriz, the one of Anglo- 
Saxon, the other of Latin origin, correspond to and repre- 


158 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


sent only ove word in the original Scriptures, Hebrew and 
Greek respectively. This should unquestionably everywhere 
be rendered by ‘ Spirit,’ especially in the New Testament, 
the word Ghost being, in our days, by no means free from 
objectionable associations. It can only tend to convey false 
impressions to many English readers, to use sometimes the 
one, sometimes the other, inan English version of the New 
Testament, the original word being always, without excep- 
tion, the single neuter substantive mvevya. 

“This ‘ Holy Spirit’ has been upon the Earth and in the 
souls of men from the beginning tillnow. Inthe Old Testa- 
ment all life, intelligence, mental energy, and mental skill, 
were of its operation. ‘The Spirit of God moved upon the 
face of the waters’ at the dawn of creation, and reduced the 
chaos into order. The same inspiration upholds us in being, 
gives us understanding and strength to do whatever man is 
capable of doing ; and when that Divine power is withdrawn, 
we die and return to the dust. 

“Tt is evident that, in all such representations, what is 
really meant by the term in question, is no other than God 
Himself. It is the Almighty Being, inscrutably putting 
forth His power in the creation, support, control, inspiration, 
of the universe of animate and inanimate things—acting 
upon us and in us by the operation of His living and will 
energy. There is nothing to shew that the ancient writers 
of the Old Testament, in thus speaking of the active power 
of God, ever attributed to it a separate personal existence. 
Nor has this, in fact, ever been maintained. The Holy 
Spirit, in the older Scriptures, is indeed the Divine Being in 
His action upon the material world, and in communion with 
the soul of man; but this fact will not justify us in saying 
that it is ‘God the Holy Spirit,’ as though it were a some- 
thing distinct, something to be thought of and named as 
God, apart from Him who alone is Jehovah and The Father. 
The personal conception, if admitted into the Old Testament, 
would manifestly tend directly to weaken or destroy the 
proper monotheistic idea of the Mosaic religion. It will be 
found, that nothing approaching to so dangerous an infringe- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 159 


a 


ment of the great characteristic principle of that religion is 
anywhere to be met with throughout the Hebrew Books, 

“The truth of these statements may be shewn by a refer- 
ence to various expressions which occur in the New Testa- 
ment. When Jesus reasoned with the Jews respecting his 
own authority as a Divine teacher, and the power by which 
he wrought his miracles, he said to them, as reported by the 
first Evangelist, ‘If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, 
then the kingdom of God is come unto you.’ In the paral- 
lel place in St. Luke, the same saying is reported thus: ‘If 
I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the king- 
dom of God is come upon you.’ The two forms of expres- 
sion were evidently understood by the Evangelists to mean 
the same thing. What that meaning is cannot be doubtful, 
and is well illustrated by the words of the fourth Gospel, 
where Jesus says on another occasion, ‘The Father that 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.’ But this, again, cannot 
reasonably be taken to mean that the Infinite Father was in 
Christ, in the Evangelist’s conception, in any other way than 
by the Divine help and power which He gave him; or, also, 
by means of the indwelling Logos; and such forms of ex- 
pression simply amount, in fact, as already observed, to the 
statement of the Apostle Peter at the Pentecost. The Al- 
mighty Father was manifested in Jesus, and, in the Apostle’s 
conception, was seen to be so, ‘ by miracles and wonders and 
signs which God did by Him.’ 

“It is thus clear, that the ‘ finger of God’ and the ‘ Spirit of 
God’ are simply God Himself, the Heavenly Father, acting 
in and through the Christ; and it is no more necessary, or 
allowable, to make a separate person of the Spirit, than it is 
to suppose such a distinction to be hidden or implied in the 
phrase ‘the finger of God.’ 

“There are still one or two facts to be mentioned which 
are wholly unaccountable on the supposition of the truth of 
the popular teaching on this subject. First, there is no 
doxology, or ascription of praise, to the Holy Spirit, in 
either the Old or the New Testament. Nor is there any 
instance, we believe, on record, in all the Scriptures, of any 


160 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


prayer having ever been addressed to the Holy Spirit as a 
separate personality. It is inconceivable that this should be 
the case, had this Divine power been regarded in the early 
Christian times as separately God, a definite personal being, 
even as much so as the Almighty Father. 

“Tt is, indeed, in the second place, to be remembered, that 
no example can be adduced, from the first and second cen- 
turies, of the Holy Spirit being made an object of worship, 
or perhaps even of its being spoken of as a distinct existence 
—as distinguished, that is to say, from the idea of it asa 
power, gift, blessing, conferred by God. Even in the Apos- 
tles’ Creed, which probably comes down from the end of the 
second century, the Holy Spirit does not appear in a personal 
character. It may be questioned whether it does so in the 
original Nicene Creed, although at the time when this was 
composed (A.D. 325), the doctrine of a Trinity of equal per- 
sons was beginning to be held by some of the more specu- 
lative of the Church Fathers. The absence of the fuller 
definition of the Spirit from the Nicene Creed proper is 
well known. It was the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 
381) which introduced the longer form now found in the 
English Prayer Book. 

“No reasonable mind can suppose that the Spirit of God 
is confined in its movements within the limits of Churches, 
one or all of them; that it can only visit the humble, wait- 
ing soul through the medium of a ‘Sacrament’ or through 
the person of a ‘ priest.’ 

“ All true religion, whether in ‘Church’ or out of it, is 
founded upon, is identical with, the sense of the Living 
Presence of God with and in the human soul—that alone. 
Such is also the evident foundation of Christianity, as recog- 
nized in almost every act and word of the Christ and his 
Apostles. With them, the Heavenly Father is the all-per- 
vading Spirit of the universe, a living God, who can hear our 
prayers, and see our efforts to do His will; and who, by His 
Spirit, can help, enlighten, and comfort the souls of all that 
faithfully look to Him, whether they shall bow down in the 
humblest meeting-house, or in the grandest cathedral of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 161 


human Art. Not, indeed, in the presence of elaborately or 
superstitiously observed formalities, any more than amidst 
fanatical noise and excitement, can we think that the Spirit 
of God most effectually visits the waiting soul, or lets the 
‘still, small voice’ of His presence be most clearly and 
touchingly heard within the heart. It is rather in the hour 
of quiet and lonely meditation that this will come to pass :— 
when we think with penitence about our past sins, when we 
reflect upon the duties we have to do, and how best we may 
do them, when we strive and pray to give ourselves up to 
all God’s will concerning us; then will the communion of 
His Holy Spirit be ours; ‘the grace of Jesus Christ’ be with 
us, and the Divine Love be shed upon us. Then, too, shall 
we know that we are true disciples of His Son, acceptable 
servants and children of our Father which is in Heaven.” 


LV.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFERENCE 
TO CONCEPTIONS OF THE ATONING SACRIFICE. | 


Not less and less, but more and more, the entire public 
Worship of Roman (and Greek) Catholicism is becoming 
one unceasing ‘Mass’; a perpetually reoffered Sacrifice of 
the body and blood of Christ upon the Altars of Cathedrals 
and Churches: without participation in which no human 
soul can be saved. Not less and less, but more and more, 
the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Churches are tending 
to this same reversion and degeneration. Rarely now can 
be found a Communion Table; all are “Altars.” Rarely 
now do we hear of a preacher, or a prophet, or even of a 
minister; all are “ Priests.’ All the paraphernalia, and cere- 
monies, and vestments, and Altar-adornments, and fastings, 
and genuflections of Romanism are slowly but surely creep- 
ing into the Anglican and Episcopal Churches all over Great 
Britain and America, and their outlying Mission Fields in 
common. They call it the “enrichment” of their services. 
Among the “ Denominations” or “Sects” there is, happily, 
an almost universal tendency upward—instead of downward 
—in this regard. We must except, however, the Revival- 


II 


162 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


istic Sects and the Salvation Army, and similar organiza- 
tions whose singing, preaching, and praying are all about 
“the atoning blood ’—even more than ever. 


Correcting Quotations. 


‘On the subject of the death of Christ, it may be enough 
to remind the reader that this is nowhere in the New Testa- 
ment, or in the Apostolic Church, represented as possessed 
of a propitiatory or expiatory efficacy, zz the old heathen 
sense of such expressions. It was simply the Providential 
means by which the admission of the Gentile world was 
secured to the faith of the Gospel. The phraseology in 
which it is spoken of is, indeed, at times very largely figura- 
tive—arising naturally out of the Levitical ideas and institu- 
tions of the Jews. But, while this is true, one literal fact is 
usually expressed by it. That fact is what has just been 
stated—not the incredible doctrine that the All-merciful 
God, in His ‘wrath,’ required to be propitiated by the death 
of an innocent victim; nor the equally incredible doctrine 
that Christ’s death has redeemed men from everlasting suf- 
ferings in hell, because he has borne their punishment, and 
thus given ‘satisfaction’ to Infinite Justice. No such bar- 
barous ideas as these are anywhere either plainly stated in 
the New Testament, or veiled and conveyed, as in a parable, 
under its more figurative expressions. 

“Tt follows by necessary consequence, that the Romanist 
and high Anglican doctrine of the Sacrament of the Lord’s 
Supper, as also the common doctrine of the ‘Atoning 
Blood,’ are perversions of Christianity and reversions to 
Paganism. All these miserable animosities and controver- 
sies to which these doctrines have given origin have been 
only so much energy misapplied and wasted, or worse. 
There is no Scriptural evidence whatever, no evidence at all 
which rises above the character of early Christian supersti- 
tion, by which the Lord’s Supper can be shewn to be of the 
nature of a sacrifice for sin, requiring to be perpetually re- 
newed by a ‘sacrificing priest.’ There is no evidence, in 
truth, worthy of the name, by which it can be shewn to be 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 163 


anything else, in its institution and nature, but a simple 
service of devout commemoration. ‘Do this in remem- 
brance of me,’ are the words of Christ himself, when he 
founded the rite. Whatever, in modern doctrines concern- 
ing it or concerning the nature of Christ’s death, passes 
beyond this, in form or in spirit, can only be set down as 
misunderstanding, or as the inherited remains of ancient 
error.” 


LVI.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFERENCE 
TO ARCHITECTURE AND ADORNMENTS AS CON- 
SLL UTINGPAVCHURGH: 


When the Disciples directed their Master’s attention to 
the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, they doubtless still 
retained some of the prevalent conception that the value, or 
truth, of a religion is signified, if not measured, by its ex- 
ternal glory and show. The Master quickly rebuked this 
erroneous conception by his pointed reply: ‘“ Not one stone 
shall be left upon another.” Never were the externalities 
of the Jewish Church—Temple, Synagogues, throngs of de- 
voted worshippers, immense offerings of the rich, zeal for 
Orthodoxy and for Ritual and for the True Church—so mag- 
nificent or flourishing or intense. And yet all was “a white- 
washed Sepulchre full of dead men’s bones.” So may it be 
in all days, and to-day and here. Certain it is that, every- 
where, chief emphasis is now being placed on finely con- 
structed and adorned church edifices; and more and more 
so. If you have not these you are nobody; having these 
you have (practically) everything! Grinding demands upon 
the purses of poor and rich alike are made to secure these: 
and crushing burdens of debt are imposed, rendering the 
one unceasing object of the Church seemingly to be—‘o 
raise money! And with it all, so often, a decrease of Spirit- 
ual Life! As our Prophet-Bishop used so often to exclaim: 
“ All this complicated Machinery and magnificent Equipment 
of the Christian Church, while the fires beneath are smoulder- 
ing or gone out!” If this be true, or in proportion as it is 
true, of any Church it is surely reverting and becoming de- 


164 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


generate. And “not one stone shall be left upon another 
that shall not be thrown down.” 

Said Epictetus: “If you have a mind to adorn your city 
by consecrated monuments, first consecrate in yourselves 
that most beautiful of all monuments, a character formed to 
purity, justice,and benevolence. Not by raising magnificent 
temples will you confer the greatest benefits upon mankind, 
but by exalting magnificent souls. Do not variegate the 
structure of your walls with Eubzan and Spartan stones 
only, but adorn yourselves with culture and virtue, for God 
is honored by the characters of those who worship him, not 
by wood or stone.” 

The original church was the people without reference to the 
place; they might meet in an upper room, in a private 
house, beneath a tree, in an open field, in a cave or cavern of 
the earth, it was all the same a church :—not z¢ but ¢hey, the 
people assembled. To such churches as these Paul wrote 
all his letters; and through the agency of such churches,— 
not aided by magnificent piles of architecture, nor by archi- 
tecture of any sort, but aided simply by the enthusiasm of 
Humanity and of the Divine Spirit which had taken com- 
plete possession of them—through the agency of such, 
houseless, homeless, roofless churches, (assemblies of devout 
people, organized andco-operating for devout purposes), was 
brought about that wonderful reformation of the first and 
second centuries we call the introduction and propagation of 
Christianity. 


LVII.—REVERSIONS AND DEGENERATIONS WITH REFER- 
ENCE TO RITUALISTIC OR OTHER SENSATIONAL 
OR ‘* POPULARISED’ FORMS OF WORSHIP. 


When the tempter said to Jesus “If thou be the Son of 
God cast thyself down,” he simply proposed to him the 
adoption of the popular methods of degenerate Religions 
the world over. By parade, trick, or show, attract the crowd 
and secure success! Wherever, whenever, or howsoever this 
is done it is a yielding to the Devil, and is a reversion to 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 165 


a a = nC oa HE TST HA AT cD Ses Ta 


Heathenism. Elaborate Ritual is only a more refined form 
of that many-formed Sensationalism by which the Church 
and Religion are made popular so as to catch and please 
the masses. This is the “wide gate and broad way that 
leads to” Degeneration; “and many there be that go in 
thereat.” 

Correcting Quotations. 

“In the ruder stages of national and individual life, men 
are educated religiously by and through the aid of sensuous 
imagery, either in outward embodiment, or in those ceremo- 
nial observances which suggest and typify the inward and 
recondite truths aimed at,—which Paganism everywhere 
uses, which with a nicer application and a wiser forelook 
made up the Hebrew polity, and which the Church of Rome 
now so largely retains in her ritual,—or in those less gross 
and ideal forms which make the staple of our modern creeds 
and practices; and it remains yet a profound problem, 
whether, dispensing with them, society could have attained 
the spiritual culture and intellectual elevation which now 
characterize it. Yet, with all the admitted advantages which 
have flowed from such a machinery, it has been liable to the 
most serious abuse, when not closely watched and guarded 
by divine counteractants, in landing the devotee into the 
depths of a degraded and besotted idolatry. The reason is 
apparent: between the idea or truth aimed at, and the human 
mind on which it is to be impressed, stands the symbol, the 
rite, the agency, the instituted means; by ceremony, by 
picture, by cross, by altar, by temple, by whatever of sensu- 
ous appliance designed to aid the imagination and impress 
the sensibilities, which tradition or custom may have intro- 
duced and sanctioned. Here intervening as by authority, 
they gain for themselves a lodgment, which gradually ob- 
scures the truth they were originally designed to symbolize; 
and so the agency supplants the principle, and what was in- 
tended as the scaffolding comes in process of time to be 
regarded as the building. And, by a degeneracy easily under- 
stood, the imagination dominates every other faculty, and leads 
to the worship of the altar, instead of God , the cross, instead 


166 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


of Him who died on it ; or wastes the sensibilities in an absurd 
fiutter of robes and tippets of sacred millinery, and the ritual- 
istic posture—putting of head and hands and knees to ape the 
external form of a devotion which has wholly escaped the 
heart. 

“The religious sense turned awry, all is disordered and 
out of harmony. Egypt—Greece—Rome! what a sad wor- 
ship, and a sadder morality, when the keen eye of Paul 
rested on the Acropolis, or scanned the magnificence of the 
palaces of the Czsars! And just as the religion of mankind 
7s withdrawn from common life and practice, and becomes a 
thing of parade and priestcraft,—a liturgical and transac- 
tional economy carried on for its own sake, and apart from 
the people,—it becomes an institution builded—every wall, and 
tower, and turret—to subserve the personal or corporate power 
and aggrandizement of those who conduct its mysteries or 
minister at its altars! And lo! we have at once repeated 
a historic picture of Dagon and Juggernaut, the priestcraft 
of India, Egypt, and Rome. Yet all this spiritual darkness 
and despotism, which has rested so long upon the nations, 
originated in a simple perversion of the religious instincts of 
humanity, from supplanting the substance by the symbol, 
and enthroning the means in place of the end.” 


LVIIIL—MODERN CONFIRMATIONS—A FEW OUT OF MANY. 


Out of the heart of Nature rolled 
The burden of the Bible old.” 


“Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea eighteen hun- 
dred years ago. His sphere-melody, flowing in wild, native 
tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and, being of 
a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now 
with thousand-fold accompaniments and rich symphonies, 
through all our hearts, and modulates and divinely leads 
them.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 167 
aren ence tN I i Pe a 
‘“ Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster.” 


“ The truth-seeker is the only God-seeker. 

“The curse of both religion and science, in all ages, has 
been the thought that there was somewhere an ultimate,— 
a place to stop. Here we are, finite minds in the midst of 
infinity. And, for the finite that is moving toward infinity, 
there is nowhere a place to anchor, but only the privilege 
and the opportunity of endless exploration.” 


“Beneath all the various widespread and disconnected 
labors, discoveries, and experiments of the great body of 
scientific workers, there is the common belief that all scien- 
tific truth is one; that the universe is all of one piece; that 
distant truths are only different parts of one divine pattern 
that runs all through the whole visible garment of God. 
This scientific faith is grander than any that the religious 
world has yet attained. But we must come to this. Re- 
ligious truth is one, as God is one. Go forth, then, ye 
religious explorers, and seek only for truth; knowing that 
all truth-seekers are brothers, and must come to hand-clasp- 
ing and looks of recognition by and by!” 


“T apprehend that there is but one way of putting an end 
to our present dissensions ; and that is, not the triumph of 
any existing system over all others, but the acquisition of 
something better than the best we now have.” 


“We search the world for truth, we cull 
The good, the pure, the beautiful 
From graven stone and written scroll, 
From the old flower-fields of the soul ; 


168 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


And, weary seekers of the best, 

We come back laden from our quest, 
To find that all the sages said, 

Is in the Book our mothers read.” 


“After all that Biblical critics and antiquarian research 
have raked from the dust of antiquity in proof of the gen- 
uineness and authenticity of the books of the new Testament, 
credibility still labors with the fact that the age in which 
these books were received and put in circulation was one in 
which the science of criticism as developed by the moderns 
—the science which scrutinizes statements, balances evidence 
for and against, and sifts the true from the false—did not 
exist ; an age when a boundless credulity disposed men to 
believe in wonders as readily as in ordinary events, requiring 
no stronger proof in the case of the former than sufficed to 
establish the latter, namely, hearsay and vulgar report; an 
age when literary honesty was a virtue almost unknown, and 
when, consequently, literary forgeries were as common as 
genuine productions, and transcribers of sacred books did 
not scruple to alter the text in the interest of personal views 
and doctrinal prepossessions.” 


“The word unto the prophets spoken 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken ; 
The word by seers or sibyls told, 

In groves of oak or fanes of gold, 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 

The heedless world hath never lost.” 


“The two indispensable conditions of a nobler and truer 
theology for the time to come, are, first, a thoroughly honest 
use of learning—a determination never to ignore or evade 
whatever criticism history or science demonstrates to be fact, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 169 
SIS a SAR SO OY ENS | UI a 
however it may upset our preconceived notionsor unsettle our 
traditional belief; and, secondly, to cultivate with the utmost 
veneration and tenderness that spiritual element of our being 
which brings us into living communion with God, and which, 
though wonderfully nourished and strengthened by the 
teachings of Scripture, flows from the same divine source, 
and is only another working of one and the self-same Spirit 
which uttered Scripture itself.” 


“The fact, so much lamented over by the clergy and the 
religious press, that so many of the most intelligent minds 
of the country are already turning their backs upon Chris- 
tianity, clearly finds an explanation to no small extent inthe 
blind folly of Christianity in continuing to demand that men 
must subscribe to the belief in an infallible Bible or else stay 
outside the Christian fold. Why does this folly continue? 
Is Christianity bent upon intellectual suicide ? Can it be pos- 
sible that it does not see that it is putting itself in a position 
where men who read and think for themselves on religious 
subjects, have no alternative left them ?—they must either 
subscribe to what they do not believe to be true, or else they 
must turn their backs on Christianity !” 


“The collection of writings which forms the Bible is, in its 
greater part, the remains of the ancient Hebrew literature. 
It is not a Creed nor a Creed-book, which men are called 
upon to receive under penalty of damnation. It nowhere 
claims to be so. Nor is it a body of immutable laws for our 
time, or for any other. Many of its ideas on creation, on 
the Divine Being, and His intercourse with men, and on 
various other subjects, are simply such as were suited to the 
infancy of the human race. The Bible may nevertheless, if 
wisely used, be a help and an influence to guide and enlighten 
the conscience ; as it is a channel through which the Unseen 
Spirit has often spoken to men, and may still speak to us, if 
we will listen.” 


170 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


‘The experience of many ages of speculative revolution 
has shown that while knowledge grows and old beliefs fall 
away, and creed succeeds to creed, nevertheless that Faith © 
which makes the innermost essence of Religion is inde- 
structible.” 


‘“No one would venture now-a-days, to quote from a book, 
whether sacred or profane, without having asked these simple 
and yet momentous questions: When was it written ? Where? 
and by whom? Was the author an eye-witness, or does he 
only relate what he has heard from others? And if the lat- 
ter, were his authorities at least contemporaneous with the 
events which they relate, and were they under the sway of 
party feeling or any other disturbing influence? Was the 
whole book written at once, or does it contain portions of an 
earlier date; and if so, is it possible for us to separate these 
earlier documents from the body of the book?” 


‘Neither shall ye tear out one another’s eyes, struggling 
over ‘ Plenary Inspiration’ and such like; try rather to get a 
little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself.” 


‘An Inspiration as true, as real, and as certain, as that 
which ever prophet or apostle reached, is yours if you will.” 


‘“‘ Jesus came to reveal the Father. But is God, the Infinite 
and Universal Father, made known only by a single voice 
heard ages ago on the banks of the Jordan or by the Sea of 
Tiberias? Is it an unknown tongue that the heavens and 
earth forever utter? Is nature’s page a blank? Does the 
human soul report nothing of its Creator? Does conscience 
announce no Authority higher than its own? Does reason 
discern no trace of an Intelligence, that it cannot compre- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, Los 


hend, and yet of which it is itself a ray? Does the heart 
find in the circuits of creation no Friend worthy of trust and 
lOve Tae 


“Our own religion takes a place not distant from, but 
among, all religions, past or present. Its relation to them, is 
not that they are earth-born, while it alone is divine, but it 
is the relation of one member of a family to other members, 
who ‘are all brothers, having one work, one hope, and one 


All-Father.’”’ 


‘“‘ Every race above the savage has its Bible. Each of the 
great religions of mankind has its Bible. These books con- 
tain the highest and deepest thoughts respecting man’s re- 
lations with the Infinite above him, with his fellows around, 
and with the mystery of his own inward being. In them are 
found the purest expressions of faith and hope, the finest as- 
pirations after truth, the sweetest sentiments of confidence 
and trust, hymns of praise, proverbs of wisdom, readings of 
the moral law, interpretations of Providence, studies in the 
workings of destiny, rules for worship, directions for piety, 
prayers, prophesies, sketches of saintly character, narratives 
of holy lives, lessons in devoutness, humility, patience, and 
charity.” 


“There is acommon impression that the Bible has created 
a religion for man by a positive enactment. The Bible has 


not made religion, but religion and righteousness have made 
the Bible.” 


“In holy books we read how God hath spoken 
To holy men in many different ways ; 
But hath the present worked no sign nor token? 
Is God quite silent in these latter days? 


172 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


“The word were but a blank, a hollow sound, 
If He that spoke it were not speaking still ; 
If all the light and all the shade around 
Were aught but issues of Almighty Will.” 


“The only safe way of meeting this danger (that threatens 
the Bible—the danger, on one hand, of hostility ; and, on the 
other, of indifference), is to find, as grounds for men’s con- 
tinued veneration and use of the Bible, propositions which 
can be verified, and which are unassailable. This, then, has 
been our object: to find sure and safe grounds for the con- 
tinued use and authority of the Bible.” 


LIX.—ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS FROM RECENT BOOKS 
BEARING ON THE HIGHER CRITICISM OF THE BIBLE.* 


1.— The LInfallible Book. 


In early times the use of metals was unknown, and conse- 
quently the knives which the priests of a certain religion used 
in connection with certain of their rites, of necessity had to be 
of stone. Later, when metal had come into use, we should 
naturally suppose the crude stone knife would give place to a 
better knife of metal. Notso, however! The knife originally 
used was of stone ; nothing else therefore would ever do in any 
future time but a stone knife. The fact that the Book had 
grown to be regarded as infallible petrified the religion it taught 
—cut off the possibility of future progress and improvement,— 
made sacred every crudeness, every imperfection, every child- 
ish rite or ceremony, as well as every false doctrine which, but 
for the notion of a faultless Book, the people in due time would 
have outgrown. 

Thus it is that in India a single text of the Vedas (misinter- 
preted, at that) resulted in the immolation of vast numbers of 
widows on the funeral piles of their husbands. Thus, too, it 
is, that we see many a religious rite practised, and many an 


* See list of volumes chiefly selected from on opening pages—page g. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 173 
CS 
absurd doctrine believed to-day in Christendom, which long ago 
would have been laid aside but for the notion of a Book whose 
every word must be accepted, and whose lightest injunction 
must be carried out to the letter, as long as time lasts. Jen can’t 
get away from the stone knife.” 

“ Another thing seems to be common with nearly all the great 
Sacred Books of the world, or rather with the believers in nearly 
all these books; and that is, that, just as soon as any one of 
these books comes to be set up as a Bible, it is from that time 
forward regarded by its adherents as the only Bible, and all 
the other Sacred Books of the world are cast out as false. In 
other words, the process of canonization of a book, if I may 
so say, or of lifting it up from a merely good book into a Bible, 
seems as arule, to be a process of degradation or condemna- 
tion of all other books and religions. So the Buddhist has 
ever been the bitter foe of the Brahman, and the Moham- 
medan of the Buddhist, and the Christian of the Mohammedan. 
Whereas, the evident truth is, each of the world’s Bibles contains 
a great deal that is good, with more or less that is of no value, 
if not positively bad. Each religion has divine elements in its 
as well as elements that are very undivine, and it is a great 
pity that the eyes of men should be blinded to this fact. It is 
not only a great pity that the adherents of other Bibles and 
religions of the world should be blinded to this fact as regards 
our Christian Scriptures and religion, but it is also a pity that 
we should be blinded to the same fact as regards scriptures and 
religions which are not Christian.” 

“In regard to our Old Testament, as is well known, the idea 
of infallibility attached first to the Pentateuch, or the Five 
Books of Moses, or the Law, as it was called. And the infalli- 
bility of even this seems to have been something very shadowy 
and intangible for a long time. The part of the Old Testament 
called by the Jews The Prophets came next to be so regarded ; 
while all that part then known as Hagiographa, or Chetubim, 
and including such books as the Psalms, and Proverbs, and Job, 
which are generally held to-day in higher esteem than any other 
of the Old Testament books, did not come to be regarded as 
really sacred much before the time of Christ. Indeed, at the 
time of Christ, all this part of the Old Testament was ranked 
much lower in authority, or sacredness, than the rest.” 


174 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“As to the New Testament writings, the Epistles seem to 
have come to be regarded as authoritative, considerably earlier 
than the Gospels or the Acts. But for a long time—certainly 
for two centuries—the New Testament writings were none of 
them looked upon by the Christian church as equally sacred 
with the Old Testament. And at least three or four centuries 
passed away before it was decided, more than in part, which 
particular ones, of the large number of writings produced within 
a century or two after the death of Jesus, should be included in 
the New Testament canon.” 


2.—ldeas and Forms Common to all Religions. 


“The ideas of immaculate conceptions and virgin mothers 
and virgin-born gods are common to many religions and Bibles 
besides the Jewish and Christian. The Greek god Mars was 
fabled to have been born by an immaculate conception of 
Juno. Zoroaster was supposed to have been born of an im- 
maculate conception by a ray from the Divine Reason. Both 
Buddha and Krishna of India are reported to have been 
immaculately conceived. The Hindoo Scriptures tell us that 
the mother of the latter (Krishna) was overshadowed by 
the god Brahma. The Messianic idea, too, is one found in 
other Bibles besides our own. The Chinese Scriptures con- 
tain prophecies of a Chinese Messiah who was to come. The 
Hindoo Scriptures contain like prophecies of a Hindoo Mes- 
siah,”’ 

“Tn the different religions of the human race, we constantly 
meet the same leading features. The same religious institu- 
tions—monks, missionaries, priests, and pilgrims. The same 
ritual—prayers, liturgies, sacrifices. The same implements— 
frankincense, candles, holy water, relics, amulets, votive offer- 
ings. The same symbols—the cross, the serpent, the all-seeing 
eye, the halo of rays. The same prophecies and miracles—the 
dead restored and evil spirits cast out. The same holy days ; 
for Easter and Christmas were kept as spring and autumn festi- 
vals, centuries before our era, by Egyptians, Persians, Saxons, 
Romans. The same artistic designs for the mother and child 
stand depicted, not only in the temples of Europe, but in those 
of Etruria and Arabia, Egypt and Thibet.” “So also the idea 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 175 
eee 
of incarnation. He (the Messiah) is predicted by prophecy, 
hailed by sages, born of a virgin, attended by miracle, borne 
to heaven without tasting death, and with promise of return. 
Zoroaster and Confucius have no human father. Osiris is the 
Son of God; he is called the Revealer of Life and Light ; he 
first teaches one chosen race ; he then goes with his apostles to 
teach the Gentiles, conquering the world by peace; he is slain 
by evil powers; after death he descends into hell, then rises 
again, and presides at the last judgment of mankind ; those 
who call upon his name shall be saved. Buddha is born of a 
virgin ; his name means the Word, the Logos, but he is known 
more tenderly as the Saviour of Man ; he embarrasses his teachers, 
when a child, by his understanding and answers ; he is tempted 
in the wilderness, when older, etc.” 


3.—Lfalse and Fanciful Interpretations. 


‘“ The Brahmin, repeating Vedic hymns, sees them pervaded by 
a thousand meanings, which have been handed down by tradi- 
tion ; the one of which he is ignorant is that which we perceive 
to be the true one.” ‘Greater violence is done by successive 
interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics of ancient 
literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries to 
find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their early 
prophets. Passages in the Veda and Zend Avesta which do 
not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines are generally 
explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of native 
commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be 
so turned as to support a religious doctrine, however modern, 
ora religious precept, however irrational, the simplest phrases 
are tortured and mangled till at last they are made to yield 
their assent to ideas the most foreign to the minds of the authors 
of the Veda and Zend Avesta.” “This practice of interpret- 
ing into Sacred Books what later ages think ought to be in 
them, and out of them what later ages think ought not to be in 
them, is pointed out and illustrated with regard to the Chinese, 
Brahmanic and Buddhist Sacred Books, by Dr. Legge, Dr. Muir, 
Burnouf, and others.” 

“Illustrations of the same with regard to our own Bible are 
more numerous still. Indeed the whole history of Christianity 


176 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


is full of exhibitions of the most marvellous and unflagging 
ingenuity, in inventing new interpretations of Scripture, to 
keep pace with the growth of human thought and the progress 
of knowledge and science.” 

“Almost every scientific theory that comes into existence is 
found to conflict in some point or other with the theological 
notions which an unscientific past has handed down. But the 
theologians are ever on the alert ; and war to the knife is at 
once declared against the scientific intruder. All friends of 
the Bible are summoned to the holy war. The conflict rages 
fiercely and shows no sign of abatement until itis seen that the 
scientists are getting the day ; then, it begins to be discovered by 
the theologians that, after all, the new theory is harmless ! z- 
deed there is no discrepancy between tt and Scripture! ‘The dis- 
crepancy that had been supposed to exist grew out of a wrong 
Scripture interpretation. In fact, instead of the two being in 
conflict, the scientific theory is really taught in the Bible.” 


4.—Lnfallible Bibles must be Infallibly preserved. 


“Grant even that the Bible was originally infallible,—that is 
to say, grant that the books were written in such a marvellous 
way as to insure their infallible correctness at the time of their 
writing ; and grant that all the books which have been excluded 
from the canon of Old Testament and New by us Protestants, 
are just the ones that ought to be excluded, and that all which 
have been included are just the ones that ought to be included, 
and that all which have been lost were spurious, so that the loss 
does not affect at all the perfectness of the canon—grant all 
that ; yet even now how far have we got toward certainty that 
this Bible which we hold in our hand ¢o-day is infallible—is 
infallible as zt comes to us? In other words, grant that the stream 
as it began its course away back yonder in Palestine twenty- 
two or twenty, or eighteen, or sixteen centuries ago, was infal- 
lible in its outset, what assurance have we that now, after 
wandering and winding down through the dark maze of the 
ages, it is s¢/7 infallible? For mark: after we have got the 
writings all infallibly written, and then after we have got them 
all collected together just as they should be into a canon or 
infallible collection, we have still got to devise a way to get 
them down to our time, without error or change.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 177 


See ree a AOS 


5.—Lhe Translators must be Infallible. 


“ To-day translators are very fallible beings. Have the trans- 
lators of all the ages, who have translated Hebrew into Greek 
and Latin, and Greek and Latin into English, and Hebrew into 
English, in connection with the Old and New Testament books, 
been miraculously preserved from making errors? If so, what 
mean the many thousands of errors which the great Commission 
of English scholars, who made for us a new English translation 
of the Bible, found in the common translation or version of 
King James? 


“© The whole number of various readings of the text of the New Testament 
that have hitherto been noted exceeds a hundred thousand, and may perhaps 
amount to a hundred and fifty thousand. Some of these variations, it is true, 
are very slight, and inno way affect the sense. But others again are very 
marked, and affect the sense most materially, For example, the celebrated 
text (I. John v. 7, 8) of the three heavenly witnesses, which has been for a thou- 
sand years the strongest scripture bulwark of the doctrine of the Trinity, is 
admitted now on all hands to be an interpolation.” 


“So, then, what becomes of our infallible Bible? It has melted 
away into thin air zf there be one single link imperfect in all the 
two-thousand-years-long chain of preservation and transmission of 
the original writings down to us.” 


6.—Miraculous Inspiration no longer Credible, 


“The Bible does not claim to be infallible. While in places 
certain claims of superior inspiration or guidance of God are 
doubtless put forth, there is not even one single book of the 
Bible that claims to be znfallible.” 

“The doctrine of the infallibility of the Bible, in the rigid 
sense in which it is widely held and taught now, was unknown to 
the early Christian church. Indeed it did not come into existence 
until the sixteenth century, not having been held even by the 
earliest and greatest of the Reformers, The Catholic church 
has never adopted it.” 

“ The doctrine of the New Testament’s miraculous inspiration 
is no longer a doctrine that can be entertained by any person 
who is at the same time honest, thoughtful, and intelligent. 


12 


178 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


This is a frank expression ; but I am confident it is a saying 
that will stand. Omit the honesty, the intelligence, or the 
thoughtfulness, and the saying thus mutilated would not hold 
good. Taken in its entirety, its force cannot be broken. Show 
me an intelligent man who entertains this doctrine, and the 
chances are ten to one that he lacks either thoughtfulness or 
honesty. Show me a thoughtful man who entertains it, and he 
must be lacking either in honesty or intelligence. Show me an 
honest man who entertains it, and either intelligence or thought- 
fulness is a missing link in the chain of his individual complete- 
ness. For every man of honesty, intelligence, and thoughtfulness 
knows that the result of criticism is, that of the twenty-seven 
books of the New Testament the authorship of only four is abso- 
lutely certain. But to elevate into the position of a supernatural 
revelation a book the authorship of six-sevenths of which is 
extremely doubtful, is manifestly an unwarrantable procedure. 
We may be tolerably sure of the authorship of another seventh. 
This is the extremity of critical concession.” 


7.—Higher Criticism rescues and exalts the Bible. 


“Nor could the surrender of the dogma of the infallibility of 
the Bible hurt the volume, as some fear, as a book of devotional 
and practical religion. Rather, in important respects, it would 
help it as such. For, as already intimated, the loss of the idea 
of infallibility would affect not in the least the higher and more 
spiritual teachings of the Bible—these portions that are ‘ profit- 
able for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in 
righteousness.’ It would be simply the letting in of a healthy 
wind to blow away such chaff as has no power to feed anybody. 
For example, the imprecations of three or four of the Psalms ; 
the brutal exploits of Samson; exaggerations like those that I 
have pointed out in connection with the number of years lived 
by the patriarchs, and the number of soldiers in the armies of 
Jeroboam and Abijah ; the falsehood of Abraham when he de- 
nied that Sarah was his wife ; the various contradictions between 
Scripture and science.” 

‘“We are driven to the alternative either of confessing that 
God is a superhuman tyrant, an infinite devil, or else denying 
that the Bible can be infallible. Does any one fail to see which of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 179 
Nk ales teeta he ar a ROT ck Ee CET 


the two is the religious as well as the reasonable thing to do? 
Surely there is a weighty and solemn religious obligation resting 
on us to deny the truth of a dogma which aims so cruel a blow 
at the character of the Being we worship, and the validity of our 
moral intuitions. The highest and holiest things of religion and 
life are very deeply at stake. As we care for religion, therefore, 
we must not shrink ; when we come upon representations of 
God in the Bible that are degrading and immoral, we must say, 
“They are wrong; the men who wrote them had the low and 
imperfect ideas of their age; we, to-day, standing in the light 
that shines from Jesus, and from the eighteen centuries since, 
worship a God vastly more exalted and holy.’” 


8.—Immoral Influence of the old Ideas of the Bible, especially upon 
the Young. 


“Think of millions of Sunday-school children, with their 
young and plastic minds, being systematically taught from Sun- 
day to Sunday, for years, such things as that it was right for 
Joshua to perpetrate his massacres of men, women, and _ babes, 
and for Jehu to murder all the house of Ahab, and for Hosea to 
break the seventh commandment, and for Moses and Aaron to lie 
to Pharaoh, and for the Jewish people to put witches to death 
and hold slaves, and the like (things, all of them, which we are 
told God commanded ), and then reflect what a foundation all this 
lays in these millions of children, upon which to build virtuous 
characters and sensitive consciences, and pure and high manhood 
and womanhood! Can anything ever compensate for, or make 
good, such an utter confusion and perversion of moral ideas in 
the minds of the young? Can we expect anything else but that 
children thus instructed will have low and confused ideas of 
right and wrong, and blunted consciences, as well as unworthy 
conceptions of God, when they grow up to be men and women ? 

No! while we continue to hold earnestly to the Bible, we 
must discriminate. While we cannot appreciate too highly the 
rich legacy of moral and religious truth and sentiment that 
comes down to us in its revered pages, let us not be guilty of the 
fatal folly of concentrating error because it happens to be associ- 
ated with truth. While we may well keep the Bible in our Sun- 
day schools, and churches, and houses, as our great, and in a 


180 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


true sense, our sacred book of religion, to be studied reverently 
and appreciatively by ourselves and by our children, we must 
beware that we do not make it a curse instead of a blessing, to 
ourselves, and especially to them, by accepting it and teaching 
them to accept it as what it 1s ot, viz., an infallible book.” 


9.— The Essential Truths of the Bible are, of themselves, Self-evident. 


“Tf there are errors and imperfections in the Bible—that is to 
say, if the Bible is not all infallible inspiration, how are we to 
know what parts are true and inspired, and what parts are untrue 
and uninspired—in other words, what parts we should keep and 
what parts we should cast out? This question, I know, often 
causes real trouble to earnest and conscientious minds, and yet 
it seems strange that it should ; for the answer is surely very 
simple and plain. With reference to all scientific and historical 
questions, and all questions of fact, connected with the Bible, 
doubtless we are to find out what is truth and what is not truth 
in exactly the same way that we find out truth and falsehood 
anywhere else, viz.—by inquiry and investigation. By honest 
inquiry, and candid investigation, almost all the more important 
of these questons of fact can doubtless be solved. That so 
many remain still unsolved, is undoubtedly due in large measure 
to the fact that as yet so little really honest and unbiassed inves- 
tigation has been made.” 

“And so, too, with regard to the great spzrztual teachings of the 
Bible—these also all carry their credentials and authority in 
themselves. Such utterances as the Golden Rule, the Beatitudes, 
and Paul’s chapter on Charity, it is impossible that men should 
mistake about. The whole matter reduces just to this—and 
nothing could be simpler—whatever in the Bible, as men read it, 
helps them, strengthens them, gives them nobler conceptions of 
God, increases their faith in humanity, widens their sympathies, 
purifies their desires, deepens their earnestness, brightens their 
hope, sends them forth with a more abiding consecration to the 
true, the beautiful, and the good, is certainly of God—and is to 
be received as such with as much assurance as if it were spoken 
to every one by an audible voice from the skies. Whereas, on 
the other hand, whatever is in the Bible, or anywhere else, that 
tends to degrade men’s conceptions of God, or confuse moral 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 181 
rk SI ie ge Ee INO 
distinctions, or lower their ideals of life or standards of duty, or 
dim their spiritual vision, is certainly not of God—and no eccle- 
siastical consecration or sanction, and no alleged attestation of 
miracles, or anything else, can make it their duty to do anything 
else than reject it.” 


10.— Who are the Enemtes of the Bible? 


“We are friends of the Bible. They are the enemies of the 
Bible who insist on keeping it standing upon a fictitious basis, 
which tends ever to melt away before free thought and candid 
investigation, as ice melts before fire. They are the enemies of 
the Bible who refuse to allow men to discriminate, judge, apply 
tests of reason and common sense—who say such utterly sense- 
less things as that the Bible is ‘ either all true or all false,’ and that 
we must “either believe it all, from cover to cover, or else throw 
it all away.’ If the array of facts, of so many and varied kinds, 
exhibited in the preceding pages, proves anything, it proves that 
the Bible is n’t either all true or all a lie. Ten thousand things 
in it are true, and grandly true—but some things in it are not 
true. We are not necessitated, either to believe it all or else 
throw it all away, any more than I am necessitated to tear down 
a beautiful picture from my walls because there are scratches or 
dust specks on it, or turn my mother out of my house, because, 
with all her wealth of tenderness and love and goodness, there 
may be possible flaws or imperfections in her character, as there 
are flaws and imperfections in the character of us all.” 


11.— How to view and use the Bible. 


“Probably there is no truer conception of the Bible than as a 
gold mine—a gold mine inestimably rich—yet a mine still. There 
are quartz and earth in no small measure mixed with the gold, 
as in all mines ; but there is also gold—true gold of God, more 
precious than we shall ever fully find out—mixed plentifully 
with the quartz and the earth. Evidently, then, the part of 
rational men and women is, neither to resort to the folly on the 
one hand, of declaring that the quartz and earth are gold, nor 
yet the equal folly on the other hand, of throwing away all, and 
declaring there is no gold, because they can plainly see quartz 


182 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


and earth with the gold ; but the part of rational men and women 
surely is to delve earnestly in the mine, casting out, without hesi- 
tation, what plainly is not gold, but saving and treasuring up, 
with glad appreciation and thankfulness, rich stores of what 
clearly is gold.” 


12.—How the Bible was formed. 


“The exact principles that guided the formation of a canon 
cannot be discovered. Definite grounds for the reception or re- 
jection of books were not very clearly apprehended. The choice 
was determined by various circumstances. The development 
was pervaded by no critical or definite principle. No member 
of the synod (that might be at any time engaged in considering 
the subject of what books ought to be regarded as canonical) 
exercised his critical faculty ; a number would decide such mat- 
ters summarily. Bishops proceeded in the track of tradition or 
authority.” ‘‘ Moreover, a great deal of bigotry, and partisan- 
ship, and bad blood was manifested from first to last. Bishops 
freely accused bishops of forgery of sacred writings and of 
alteration of the oldest texts, and altogether the debates and pro- 
ceedings of the synods and councils that had part in settling the 
canon, remind one very much of some of the political conventions. 
of our day.” 

“ And yet, out of all this a result came, the excellence of which, 
on the whole, we may well be appreciative of. It is easy for the 
scholarship of to-day to see that the men who are responsible for 
our Bible being what it is now, made many and grave mistakes.” 


13,.—TZhe Bible Canon always an open Question. 


“Luther was decidedly of the opinion that our present canon 
is imperfect. He thought that the Old Testament book of 
Esther did not belong in the Bible. On the other hand, in trans- 
lating the Old Testament, he translated the apocryphal books of 
Judith, Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, First and Second Macca- 
bees, and the Prayer of Manasseh. In his prefaces he gives his 
judgment concerning these books. With regard to First Macca- 
bees, he thinks it almost equal to the other books of Holy 
Scripture, and not unworthy to be reckoned among them. Of 
Wisdom, he says he was long in doubt whether it should be num- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 183 
a MORENO RTA i Rs aS 
bered among the canonical books ; and of Sirach, he says that 
it is a right good book, proceeding from a wise man. He had 
judgments equally decided regarding certain New Testament 
books, He thought the Epistle to the Hebrews came neither 
from Paul nor any of the apostles, and was not to be put on an 
equality with Epistles written by apostles themselves. The 
Apocalypse (or Revelation) he considered neither apostolic nor 
prophetic, and of little or no worth. He did not believe the 
Epistle of Jude proceeded from an apostle. James’ Epistle he 
pronounced unapostolic, and “an epistle of straw.’ 

“The great Swiss reformer, Zwingli, maintained that the Apoca- 
lypse is not properly a Biblical book. Even Calvin did not think 
that Paul was the author of Hebrews, or Peter of the book called 
Muehetera: 

“As to the New Testament canon, that was never settled only 
in a most haphazard and utterly inadequate way. Up to the 
beginning of the second century, no one seemingly ever thought 
of such a thing as any writings ever being regarded as Sacred 
Scripture, except the Old Testament writings. For a long time 
after the gospels and various epistles came into existence, they 
were much less esteemed than the Old Scriptures. Indeed, up 
to about the middle of the second century they were not so 
highly esteemed as the oral traditions of the churches in which 
any of the apostles had preached. By the close of the second 
century, however, a change appears. Certain New Testament 
books have come into more general favor than the rest, and are 
beginning to be classed to a certain extent by themselves as a 
new collection of Sacred Scriptures. As time goes on, they grow 
more and more into use among the churches. Yet for centuries 
the various churches continued to use, side by side with the 
writings which make up our New Testament to-day, various 
books which we call spurious.” 


14.— The long Period of the Bible's Growth. 


“The various histories, biographies, poems, prophecies, letters, 
and productions of one kind and another which make up this 
collection of literature called our Bible, was more than a thousand 
years coming into existence ; some of the productions making 
their appearance (at least in substance, if not in their present 


184 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


form) in the morning of Jewish civilization, as early in the na- 
tion’s history as the nation had a literature at all; while others 
did not come into being until the nation had passed through long 
and varied experiences of contact with some of the richest civili- 
zations of the ancient world, including among others the Phe- 
nician, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman.” 

“Comparing the date of the origin of our own Sacred Scrip- 
tures with the date of the origin of the other great Sacred 
Scriptures of the world, we see from the foregoing that no part 
of our Scriptures can have been written so early by probably 
some centuries as the earliest portions of the Vedas and Zend 
Avesta, which are decided by the best authorities to have been 
produced as far back as from 1000 to 2000 B.c. On the other 
hand, we see that certain portions of our Sacred Scriptures—the 
whole New Testament part, with possibly one or more books of 
the Old—were written considerably later than any of the other 
great Bibles except the Koran, which was not produced till the 
seventh century after Christ.” 

“The writings nearest the time of Jesus after the Epistles of 
Paul are the Epistle to the Hebrews (certainly not Paul’s) and 
the book of Revelation. These were both written from 65 to 
7OvA,D..” 

“Of the existence of the Four Gospels we learn with certainty 
only in the fourth quarter of the second century, one hundred 
and fifty years after the death of Jesus. The earliest, Matthew, 
cannot have received its present form much before the end of 
the first century. The latest, John, dates from about the year 
135. Possibly from a few years earlier than this, possibly from 
a few years later.” 


15.—Date of the Birth of F esus. 


“Popular chronology implies that Jesus was born 1896 years 
ago last Christmas-day. But this chronology is notoriously inac- 
curate so far as the year is concerned, and arbitrary as concerns 
the day. The Christian era, that is, the dating of events from 
the birth of Jesus, was an invention of the abbot Dionysius in 
the sixth century after Christ. Before this time events had been 
dated from the founding of Rome, or from the accession of this 
or that emperor to the throne. But the investigation of Diony- 
sius was conducted without any critical acumen. The Gospels 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 185 


represent Jesus as being born before the death of Herod; but 
Herod died four years before the beginning of our era. Luke 
associates the birth of Jesus with a certain taxing of Quirinius. 
But this taxing was six years after the beginning of our era. 
The relations of Jesus to John the Baptist afford somewhat more 
satisfactory data. Reckoning from these, the average of critical 
opinion gravitates to a point three or four years before the be- 
ginning of our era. If Jesus was born, as Keim and others think, 
before the death of Herod, some three or four years earlier would 
be the true date, and this year of ours (1897) would properly be 
the year 1903, 1904, or 1905. Certainty is here impossible. It 
is only safe to say that Jesus was born from three to eight years 
before the time suggested by our popular chronology.” 


16.—The Story of the Miraculous Birth. 


“ The genesis of the story of the miraculous birth of Jesus is so 
easily accounted for without supposing any basis of reality, that 
one must be wilfully credulous to entertain the idea for a single 
moment. It is of a piece with various stories predicating the 
miraculous birth of famous persons, especially of famous teach- 
ers of religion. Buddha and Zoroaster share with Jesus in this 
doubtful honor, The fundamental Gospel tradition is wholly 
innocent of any such idea. So, too, are the Gospels in their 
present shape, beyond the legends of the infancy. Paul is 
equally silent where he would have been voluble enough if he 
had heard or given a moment’s heed to such atale. No, he is 
contradictory rather than silent. For when he speaks of Jesus as 
“born of a woman,” it is only the madness of dogmatic precon- 
ception that can imagine any denial of the human father. The 
expression was the current phrase for human generation. But 
we have more emphatic contradiction close at hand in the leg- 
ends of the birth and infancy. Both Matthew and Luke deduce 
Jesus from David through F$oseph. What are we to infer from 
this remarkable phenomenon, if not that these genealogies were 
the invention of a time when the miraculous birth of Jesus was 
an unheard-of fable? 


17.—The Messianic Hope. 


“Few subjects have received more conscientious study than 
the Messianic hope ; and now, at length, though much remains in 


186 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


doubt, a few clear outlines have been well made out, which we 
may hope will not be blurred by any future investigation. These 
outlines are, however, as different as possible from those of the 
popular Christian exposition. The gist of this exposition is that 
the Messianic hope originated in the time of Abraham, was 
cherished by Moses, attained its most complete development in 
the age of the prophets, from 800 to 400 B.c., and then retired 
into comparative obscurity for centuries, to await its consumma- 
tion and fulfilment in the birth and life and death of Jesus 
Christ, Jesus the Christ, that is to say, the Anointed, the Messiah. 
Such is the popular Christian exposition, and the commentary 
which an intelligent and scientific criticism makes upon it is this: 
The Messianic hope displayed itself most characteristically and 
powerfully, not from 800 to 4oo B.c., but from 175 B.C. to 135 
A.D ., and that from the birth of Jesus onward to the final extinc- 
tion of the Jewish nation by the Emperor Hadrian was the period 
of its most remarkable growth. This criticism assures us that 
the Messianic element in the prophetic writings is entirely sub- 
ordinate ; that much that is accounted Messianic is the reflection 
back upon the prophets of the Messianic ideas of a later time.’” 

“The Jewish hope of a Messiah became in the Christian the 
hope of Jesus’ second coming ‘in the clouds of heaven with great 
power and glory.’ The forms taken upon itself through all this 
period by the Messianic hope were exceedingly diverse... The 
factor of a personal Messiah was frequently wanting altogether. 
But in one form or another it was omnipresent and omnipotent. 
From the death of Herod, 4 B.c., to the death of Bar-Cochba, 
132 A.D., no less that fifty different enthusiasts set up as the 
Messiah, and obtained more or less following. No one of these 
attained to general recognition before Bar-Cochba, under whose 
leadership the hope was quenched in seas of blood. Some saw 
the Messiah even in Herod the Great! This was the lowest 
point reached by the Messianic ideal.” 


18.— Fesus the Messiah. 


That Jesus should come at length to think of himself as the 
Messiah was not so strange as the simultaneous conclusion that 
he must be a suffering Messiah ; for, the Messianic idea was so 
omnipresent to the Jewish mind that, for a man conscious of a 
great mission not to connect his mission in some way with that 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 187 
1 A RR lhe TA scl I RLS ts I a | Baoan ARN 
idea, was quite impossible. It was the grandeur of his spiritual 
ideal that compelled Jesus to identify his mission with the Messi- 
anic office. He remained the herald of the kingdom so long as 
he could consistently do so. The Messiah must be the incarna- 
tion of the highest possible ideal. To himself Jesus was this. 
This wonderful self-confidence on the part of Jesus did not ne- ’ 
cessitate self-righteousness, only an absolute devotion to the 
moral welfare of mankind,—only an absolute conviction that 
righteousness and love were fundamental facts in the new order. 
It was as representative of these that he demanded personal 
allegiance.” 

“ The first thing we have to do, then, is to take the record of 
the facts, if we can, absolutely without the warp of any precon- 
ceived opinion, or any theological dogmatism. Looking at them 
SO, it appears plain that what we call the Messianic consciousness 
of Jesus, which is so intense and even predominant towards the 
close of his ministry, was a comparatively late development in 
him, To put it in theological phrase, his generation as son of 
God was anterior to his appointment as Messiah of the Jews. In 
the language we usually apply to human experience, his vocation 
as a moral and spiritual teacher was recognized first; and only 
as an after-result came his strong conviction that He was the 
chosen deliverer of his people, though by a way they could not 
understand or follow.” 


19.—The Gospel according to the Hebrews. 


‘Time was when our New Testament Matthew was thought 
to be a translation of the Gospel according to the Hebrews. 
But one of the fixed facts of modern criticism is that our Matthew 
is not atranslation. And still its relation to the Gospel accord- 
ing to the Hebrews is one of the most interesting questions of 
New Testament criticism. The agreements of the two ‘are 
many, and where they disagree the uncanonical work sometimes 
preserves the more reliable tradition. The Gospel of the He- 
brews seems to have existed in various forms, in this respect 
being in no wise different perhaps from the New Testament 
gospels. Whether its earliest form was the germ of our own 
Matthew, or the two branched from a common stock, is a dilemma 
which impales on either horn an equal number of New Testament 
scholars. This much, however, is tolerably certain : that through- 


188 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


out the second century the Gospel according to the Hebrews 
enjoyed a reputation not inferior to that of our New Testament 
gospels. The decline of its reputation synchronized with the 
decay of Jewish Christianity.” 

“Tt is even possible that Matthew arrived at a written form 
before the destruction of Jerusalem in 7o a.p. It contains 
sentences that could not have originated after that event, and 
the crudity of the method of aggregation is evinced by the fact 
that these sentences are allowed to stand and bear the contra- 
diction of events. The result at which we finally arrive, there- 
fore, is this: Zhat from thirty to forty years after the death of 
Fesus the tradition of his life and ministry and death had shaped 
itself into the basis of our present Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and 
Luke. The contents of this fundamental tradition (fundamental 
to our Gospels, but in its turn, no doubt, the result of various 
accretions)—the contents of this tradition are as flattering to the 
anti-supernaturalist as he could reasonably expect. Accounts 
of miracles are here, even some of the most startling ; but there 
is nota hint of the miraculous birth of Jesus, nor of the legends 
of his infancy, and the tradition ends with the discovery that his 
tomb is empty, without a word to signalize that he was seen 
again by any woman or disciple. In this tradition the personality 
of Jesus is revealed in lines so firm and strong that the accretions 
of a later time add little to their force. The man behind the 
myth is there, no thin abstraction, but an individual with blood 
in his veins, and in his heart the love of human kind.” 


20.— The New Testament Miracles. 


“The strangest thing of all in this connection is that the 
Fourth Gospel, cherishing a conception of Jesus as the pre-ex- 
istent Logos, nevertheless does not avail itself of the miraculous 
birth, but plainly intimates that Jesus was the son of Joseph in 
the line of human generation.” 

“ There is, indeed, much better evidence for the miracles re- 
corded by St. Augustine than for any recorded in the New Testa- 
ment. We come much nearer the events, and we know some- 
thing of the narrators, where in the New Testament we know 
nothing. Never was there a place and time where and when 
stories of prodigy and miracle were more likely to be fashioned 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 189 

Nad BD cit Yak Rha SS ts 2 el 

without any basis of reality, and to obtain credence without any 

evidence, than in the years immediately succeeding the lifetime 

of Jesus. Considering the place and time, the wonder is that 

the miraculous element in the New Testament is not much more 
obtrusive than it is, much more extravagant.” 

“There was no conflict here with modern science. For dis- 
eases of the imagination, to this day the most effective remedies 
are psychological. Much more must it have been so in the time 
of Jesus, when all concerned were alike under the dominion of 
an appalling superstition, the belief in demoniacal possession. 
But given a few cures of the so-called demoniacs by Jesus, also 
the spiritual soil and atmosphere of Palestine, and these cures 
would bring forth in a dozen or twenty years a crop of miracle- 
stories so extensive that not one quarter of its bulk could be 
husbanded within the limits of the New Testament. And a few 
cures of this sort, or temporary alleviations, are, I am persuaded, 
the bottom facts which underlie the entire structure of the mi- 
raculous in the New Testament, and in Christian history.” 


21.—Our Synoptic Gospels. 


“Of the three Gospels that still remain to us the relative values 
are still in some dispute. That we are certain of the authorship 
of any one of them only a very ignorant or exceedingly dogmatic 
person would be likely to declare. Nor of the time when they 
assumed their present shapes can we be more than proximately 
sure. We are for the first time definitely aware of their existence 
as Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s, from 170 to 180 a.p, Nor 
are we aware of their existence in any shape or under any name 
at a much earlier period. Writing in the middle of the second 
century, Justin Martyr quotes from certain “ Memoirs of the 
Apostles,” as he calls them, so freely that a consistent biography 
of Jesus might be collected from his quotations. But he never 
names the authors of these memoirs. His quotations from them 
often disagree with our Gospels, and seldom agree with them ; 
and if our Gospels (the Synoptics) were used by him, they were 
used in conjunction with others which were apparently as highly, 
if not more highly, esteemed. If we had only external evidence 
to rely upon, it would be quite impossible to predicate the ex- 
istence of our Synoptic Gospels earlier than the middle of the 
second century.” 


190 RENASCENTIT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


22.—The Fourth Gospel. 


“The idea of the Logos or Word came into Jewish thought 
from two sides, from Persia and from Greece; from Persia by 
way of Babylon, from Greece by way of Alexandria. The Per- 
sian-Zoroastrian religion taught that God created all things by 
his word. The cosmology in Genesis is of Persian origin. ‘God 
said let there be light, and there was light.’ His word is the 
creative power. Before the time of Jesus this Word of God had 
become personified in Jewish thought, most frequently under the 
name of Wisdom. * Wisdom hath been created before all things,’ 
we read in the Book of Proverbs ; ‘Wisdom has been created 
before all things,’ in Ecclesiasticus; and in the Wisdom of 
Solomon, “She is a reflection of the everlasting light, the un- 
spotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his good- 
ness. The Greek influence contributed to the same tendency 
of thought. The later followers of Plato, the Neo-Platonists, 
had personified his doctrine of the divine idea or reason. They 
called it the first born Son of God, born before the creation of 
the world, itself the agent of creation. It was the image of God’s 
perfection, the mediator between God and man. Philo Judzus, 
who was born about twenty years before Jesus, was possessed 
with these ideas and endeavored to connect them with the Old 
Testament teachings.” 

“Thus it was that the writer of the Fourth Gospel found this 
doctrine of the Logos ; and on the other hand he found a con- 
ception of Jesus expressed in terms the most exalted, and bearing 
a very strong resemblance to the terms of the Logos doctrine of 
Philo. True, Philo had never dreamed of a human incarnation 
of the Logos, and Paul had never identified his exalted Christ 
with the Alexandrian Word. The first to do this was pretty cer- 
tainly not the writer of the Fourth Gospel. It occurred to many 
writers at about the same time. To effect an alliance between 
Christianity and Alexandrian Platonism was the one passionate 
enthusiasm midway of the second century. Of this enthusiasm 
the Fourth Gospel is the grandest monument. The Fourth Gos- 
pel is not less valuable on this account. Only its value hence- 
forth is that of a contribution to our knowledge of second-century 
ideas. Every true word that it contains is just as true as ever. 
Every beautiful thought is just as beautiful now as before.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. IOI 
et ie ae ee A 

“ Of the Fourth Gospel we find no mention till the second 
century is drawing to its close. Of its existence we have little if 
any notice earlier than this. But we have ample evidence that 
if it was in existence midway of the second century, and back of 
this for five and twenty years, it was little known and less es- 
teemed, and certainly was not regarded as the work of an Apos- 
tle. That it was meant to pass for John’s there cannot bea doubt ; 
but so was the book of Daniel meant to pass for Daniel’s, who 
had been dead three hundred years when it was written. To 
seek prestige for one’s own thought under the cover of some 
mighty name was for hundreds of years before and after the time 
of Jesus the commonest proceeding. It was a species of self- 
abnegation. The writer sacrificed his personal renown to some 
high cause that had enlisted his enthusiasm and demanded his 
service. 

“ That one biography of a person is written subsequently to an- 
other is not necessarily a circumstance that is prejudicial to the 
later work. The latest is frequently the best. But if it is SO, It 
must be in virtue of a closer adherence to, or a more vital ap- 
preciation of, the fundamental biographical material.” 

“ Since the sponge dipped in vinegar moistened the dying lips 
of Jesus, no such service has been rendered him as that of the 
critics who have transferred the Fourth Gospel from the province 
of biography to that of theological controversy and imaginative 
dogma.” 


23.—S?¢. Paul's Conception of Fesus. 


“If with Ferdinand Christian Baur we accept as authentic 
only four of Paul’s Epistles out of the fourteen ascribed to him 
in the New Testament, namely, Romans, the two Corinthians, 
and Galatians, Paul’s theory of Christ’s nature is quite homoge- 
neous. If we also accept, as I am inclined to do, with the sup- 
port of many able critics, First Thessalonians, Colossians, and 
Philippians, then we have in Paul also a development of which 
the starting point is found in First Thessalonians, his earliest 
epistle, the middle point in Romans, Galatians, and Corinthians, 
and the culmination in Colossians and Philippians. In Thessa- 
lonians the conception is hardly different from that of the Sy- 
noptic Gospels. In Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians it has 
already made a great advance. To the actual historical Jesus, 


192 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


eS ee eee ee 


Paul was quite indifferent. He does not quote his words. He 
does not recount his deeds. He does not dwell on his example. 
His self-denial is not that of a man among men. It is the laying 
aside of heavenly glory, and the assumption of a human form, 
Paul’s thought centred not in the historic Jesus but in an ideal 
Christ of his own conception.” 

“This was his first thought,—that Jesus was glorified by his 
death and resurrection ; but this could not satisfy his specula- 
tive genius. A glory with which Christ was invested did not 
satisfy him. He wanted a glory for him that was essential to his 
personality ; and so his death and resurrection became only the 
means of his resuming a glory which he had ages before his 
earthly manifestation—the glory of a heavenly, archetypal man. 
Henceforth to Paul the human life of Jesus was the merest epi- 
sode in the career of the heavenly man, the ideal Christ of his 
speculative imagination ; and yet lofty as was Paul’s conception 
of the Christ, he cherished the idea that all men who would 
might be even such as he. Although an image of the divine 
glory, he was not less an image of the possible glory of the 
saints. It was not the character of the historical Jesus that 
marked Paul’s limit of possible human attainment. It was the 
nature of the heavenly pre-existent Christ.” 


24.—The Corporeal Resurrection and Ascension. 


“ Article IV., of the established Church of England, reads : 
‘Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body 
with flesh, bones and all things appertaining to the perfection of 
man’s nature, wherewith he ascended into heaven and there sit- 
teth, until he return to judge all men at the last day.’ ” 

“With his corporeal substance,—in the language of the Article, 
‘with his flesh and bones and all things appertaining to the per- 
fection of man’s nature ’—he ascended into heaven. Assuming 
all this, where is the argument for our personal immortality ? 
The resurrection of Jesus is a resurrection of the Jody ; his as- 
cension is an ascension of the Jody ; his immortality is an immor- 
tality of the Jody. Now it is quite impossible for us to have any 
such resurrection, any such ascension, any such corporeal immor- 
tality. Our dodies moulder away. They mingle with the ele- 
ments. They are taken up into vegetable and animal structures. 
What analogy can there be between our resurrection at some 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 193 
bite sesame NBG SORA eo HEE PI ot a 
infinitely distant day and that of Jesus from twenty-four to 
thirty-six hours after his death? There can be no analogy 
whatever, and therefore there can be no argument from the one 
thing to the other.” 

‘ Having reviewed the testimony of the Gospels to the corporeal 
resurrection and ascension in almost every particular, what is the 
net result? No single account is self-consistent or agrees with 
any other. The different accounts are self-destructive and mu- 
tually destructive all. They agree in hardly a single particular. 
They differ in particulars of the first importance. Here the ap- 
pearance of the risen Jesus is placed in Galilee, there, in direct 
contravention of his own assertions, in Jerusalem. Here his as- 
cension is definitely placed on the first day ; elsewhere, by differ- 
ent writers, later, but without general agreement, Here the risen 
Jesus is a man of flesh and blood: elsewhere a bodiless ghost ; 
and so on through all the catalogue of difference and contra- 
diction.” 

“ The two from Emmaus are still talking with the eleven when 
Jesus stands in their midst. They are affrighted and think they 
see a spirit. While eating with them, he takes bread, breaks It, 
and gives thanks. Then they recognize Jesus and he vanishes 
from their sight. A body with flesh and bones capable of ‘ ap- 
pearing’ in a room whose doors are fastened, and in the same 
way disappearing, and vanishing like a shadow !” 

“What is the amount and nature of Paul’s evidence to the 
corporeal resurrection and ascension of Jesus? In First Corin- 
thians, xv. 3, we read, ‘ForI delivered unto you that which I 
also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the 
Scriptures, and that he was raised again on the third day ; and 
that he was seen by Peter, then by thetwelve. After that he was 
seen by above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater 
part remain unto this present day, but some are fallen asleep. 
After that he was seen by James, then by all the apostles ; and 
last of all he was seen by me also as by one born outof due 
time. a 

“ But this concluding clause is exceedingly significant : ‘and last 
of all he was seen of me also.’ Paul makes no distinction between 
fis sight of the risen Jesus and ¢hat of the others. That Paul had 
seen the risen Jesus, and that he considered Ars sight of him as 
good as any other,—so much is certain. 

13 


194 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


NN 
“¢ Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Master ?’—This sight of 
Jesus must have been years after his death. That it was a sight 
of the dody of Jesus which hung upon the cross there is not an 
‘ntimation. . . . Whatever it was, it was something which 
occurred years after the death of Jesus, and it must have been 
something entirely different from the appearance of Jesus in 
the same Jody with which he died, the resurrection of which is 
represented with much inconsistency in the four Gospels. 

“So much for the testimony of Paul. 

“ And now aword in regard to the ascension. Matthew does not 
mention it. Mark is equally silent ; but in the Shen a 
Spurious Verses 9-20—to this Gunn it is said that ‘he was taken 
up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.’ John also is 
silent. So, then, we have three Gospels, out of four, making 
no final disposition of the risen Jesus. . . . In the original 
tradition, there was no ascension. The resurrection and as- 
cension were one and the same thing. This is Paul’s thought 
as well. Though he has so much to say about the resurrec- 
tion, he has not a word concerning any ascension. 

Such is the most reasonable account that can be given of tHe 
causes that were operative in producing the New Testament 
tradition.” 

“ Ascension into heaven ‘with his flesh and bones’ ! That men 
could believe this centuries ago, when the learning of the few 
was as superstitious as the ignorance of the many, I can easily 
understand. That the ignorant and superstitious of the present 
time, who know nothing of the laws of evidence, who have no 
appreciation of the inviolable sanctity of the natural order of the 
world, and no perception that it is men’s growing faith in this 
which marks the hours of progress on the great dial of history,— 
that such can s#//,in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, 
believe the same is also not hard to understand. Aut how any 
thoughfully intelligent person, in these days, can believe it passes the 
bounds of credibility.” 


25.—A Parable of the Life of Fesus. 


‘“ T have read or heard somewhere of aremarkable Indian plant 
or tree which grows, isolated from others, to a great height, 
throwing out few, if any, lateral branches, but suddenly, at the 
very top, bursting into a single flower of marvellous brilliancy and 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 195 
aac eae se IY Vor TO IES 
beauty, and with a fragrance that enchants the sense with an 
unspeakable delight. And then—it dies! It is a parable of the 
life of Jesus. Year after year it grew in silence and obscurity, 
sending no lateral branches, that we know of, out into the sunny 
Galilean air; but suddenly its top, as if drew-sprinkled with the 
baptism of John, as if expanded by the fierce heats of a nation’s 
patriotic and religious zeal, burst into a flower whose beauty and 
whose fragrance have enriched whole centuries of time. But as 
we may be sure that all that patient waiting, silent growing, of the 
Indian tree were necessary to its one consummate flower, we may 
be equally sure that all the patient waiting, silent growth, of 
Jesus were but the needful preparation for his brief years of 
active service among men, a flower whose fragrance, even to this 
day, enriches every wind that blows.” 


LX.—MISCELLANEOUS CONFIRMATIONS—EXTRACTS FROM 
RECENT BOOKS. 


“ During the life of Buddha no record of events, no sacred 
code containing the sayings of the master was wanted. His 
presence was enough, and thoughts of the future seldom entered 
the minds of those who followed him. It was only after Buddha 
had left the world to enter into Nirvana, that his disciples 
attempted to recall the sayings and doings of their departed 
friend and master. Then everything that seemed to redound 
to the glory of Buddha, however extraordinary and incredible, 
was eagerly welcomed, while witnesses who would have ventured 
to criticise or reject unsupported statements, or detract in any 
way from the holy character of Buddha, had no chance of being 
listened to. And when, in spite of all this, differences of opin- 
ion arose, they were not brought to the test of a careful weigh- 
ing of evidence, but the names of ‘unbeliever’ and ‘heretic ’ 
were quickly invented in India as elsewhere, and bandied back- 
wards and forwards between contending parties, till at last, 
when the doctors disagreed, the help of the secular power had 
to be invoked, and kings and emperors convoked councils for 
the suppression of schism, for the settlement of an orthodox 
creed, and for the completion of the Sacred Canon. We know 
of King Asoka, the contemporary of Seleucus, sending his royal 
missive to the assembled elders, and telling them what to do and 


196 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ee 


what to avoid, warning them also in his own name of the apoch- 
ryphal or heretical character of certain books, which, as he thinks, 
ought not to be admitted into the Sacred Canon. 

“We here learn a lesson, which is confirmed by the study of 
other religions, that canonical books, though they furnish in most 
cases the most authentic information within the reach of the 
student of religion, are not to be trusted implicitly ; nay, that they 
must be submitted to a more searching criticism and to more strin- 
gent tests than any other historical books.” 

“In reading the above, one can hardly believe that it is not 
the history of the origin of our own New Testament writings 
and the formation of our own New Testament canon, that 
Prof. Miiller is tracing, instead of the origin of the Buddhist 
Sacred Writings and the formation of the Buddhist Canon. 
For if we substitute ‘ Jesus’ in the place of ‘ Buddha,’ the © coun- 
tries around the Mediterranean sea’ in the place of ‘ India,’ and 
the ‘Emperor Constantine’ with one or two other Christian em- 
perors in the place of “ King Asoka,’ we shall have an almost exact 
record of the origin of a large part of the literature which came into 
being as the result of Fesus’ life and teachings, and the manner in 
which a portion of this became singled out from the rest and by 
degrees united into essentially what is now our New Testament.” 


“The Jehovah of the Old Testament makes himself a local 
habitation, appears in the temple, walks and talks, and thinks 
and plans, loves and hates, gets angry, takes vengeance, and 
changes his mind, very much after the fashion of an Oriental 
despot. This is not to be wondered at; for as water cannot 
rise above its source, so the human mind cannot think of God 
as being anything higher than its highest and best conception 
of what is worthy of divinity. MWumantty cannot escape itself ; and 
so its thought of God ts always the best tt is capable of thinking at the 
time. As man grows and develops, so does his idea of divinity. 
The divine does not change; but as you can put only twelve 
quarts of the Atlantic in a twelve-quart pail, so in a finite brain 
you can put only so much of the Infinite as the finite can con- 
tain. As the thought of man gets larger, its contents increase.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 197 
= emma eer errr aT Ns cer Ny RELL, 
“ Every historic religion, that has won for itself a place in the 
world’s history, has evolved from a core of fact, a nimbus of 
legendary matter which criticism cannot always separate; and 
which the popular faith does not seek to separate. Christianity, 
like every other religion, has its mythology (or legends) so inter- 
twined with the veritable facts of its early history, so braided 
and welded with its first beginnings, that the myth and legend 
are not always distinguishable from the history. Yet the mythi- 
cal (or legendary) interpretation of certain portions of the gos- 
pels has no appreciable bearing on the character of the Christ. 
The impartial reader of the record must see that the evangelists 
did not tnvent the character ; they did not make the Fesus of thetr 
story ; on the contrary, it was he that made them. It is a true 
saying that only a Christ could invent a Christ.” 


“ After all that Biblical critics and antiquarian research have 
gathered from the dust of antiquity in proof of the genuineness 
and authenticity of the books of the New Testament, credibility 
still labors with the fact that the age in which these books were 
received and put in circulation was one in which Zhe science of 
criticism as developed by the moderns—the science which scrutinizes 
statements, balances evidence for and against, and sifts the true Jrom 
the false—adid not exist ; an age when a boundless credulity dis- 
posed men to believe in wonders as readily as in ordinary events, 
requiring no stronger proof in the case of the former than suf- 
ficed to establish the latter, viz.:—hearsay and vulgar report ; 
an age when literary honesty was a virtue almost unknown, and 
when, consequently, literary forgeries were as common as genu- 
ine productions, and transcribers of sacred books aid not scruple 
to alter the text in the interest of personal views and doctrinal pre- 
possessions.” 


“And the best scholarship of the church is still unsettled 
about Hebrews, James, Jude, the second epistle of Peter, the 
second and third of John, and the Revelation. 

If there be infallible books, of which to make an infallible 
Bible, and if these be infallibly preserved and transmitted to us, 
we are still undecided and in trouble, unless we have also an in- 
Jallible catalogue to tell us which they are. Jf there are two or 


198 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


three guide-posts, and one is infallibly correct, and the others 
not, it matters little to us, unless some one is able to tell us which 
isright. And then, if words be so important, how comes it that 
the New Testament writers quote the Old loosely and incorrectly ? 
In one place, the Septuagint is followed where its translation 
from the original Hebrew is blunderingly wrong, and even re- 
verses the sense ; and not only are these things so, but ¢here are 
in the Bible palpable errors and inconsistencies and contradictions that 
no one would think of trying to cover up, were it not for the pressing 
necessities of special pleading.”’ 


‘Again, there are irreconcilable difficulties in connection with 
the genealogies of Jesus given by Matthew and Luke. Both 
these genealogies trace the ancestry of Jesus through Joseph. 
But having done this, both Matthew and Luke tell us that 
Joseph was not the father of Jesus at all. Thus Fesus 1s claimed 
to have descended from David, because a man who ts not his father 
descended from David. A most extraordinary claim! Moreover, 
Matthew says the number of generations from Abraham to David 
is fourteen, and from David to the Captivity fourteen, and from 
the Captivity to Christ fourteen. But if we look carefully at the 
genealogy, as he himself gives it, the number from Abraham to 
David is only ¢hirfeen, and the number from the Captivity to 
Christ is only thirteen. Furthermore, the genealogies of Joseph, 
the husband of Mary (called the genealogies of ¥esus, but not 
the genealogy of Jesus at all unless Joseph was Jesus’ father) as 
given by Matthew and Luke, are radically different, agreeing in 
only fifteen names in the whole list, and differing in forty names. 
Now, when we bear in mind that these genealogies both run back 
in the male line, from son to father, and then grandfather, and 
then great-grandfather, and so on, we see that divergence can mean 
nothing else but error in one or the other of the authorities, or both. 
Nor may we suppose that one genealogy is that of Mary. Such 
a supposition rests on not a shadow of evidence, while it is posi- 
tively contradicted by the language of the text.” 


“ Neither faith, nor love, nor truth, nor disinterestedness, nor 
forgiveness, nor patience, nor peace, nor equality, nor education, 
nor missionary effort, nor prayer, nor honesty, nor the sentiment 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. Ig9 
SEAS IESIEIER TERT PaL er Nel nd cde a Mae 
of brotherhood, nor reverence for woman, nor the spirit of hu- 
mility, nor the fact of martyrdom, zor any other good thing ts mo- 
nopolized by any form of faith. All religions recognize, more or 
less remotely, these principles ; all do something to exemplify 
something to dishonor them.” 


“ He is the Curist. This word literally means the‘ anointed,’ 
and the idea conveyed by it is derived from the ancient ceremony 
of consecrating a king to his kingly office. In connection with: 
Jesus it is clearly a figurative term, involving, however, the idea 
that he who bore it had been called and appointed to his office ; 
intimating, therefore, the existence of a higher power which had 
chosen him. "ence Peter terms him ‘the Christ of God ’—God’s 
Christ, that is, one anointed of God, or appointed by Him to be 
what he was. 

“ This word, we need scarcely remind the reader, is the same in 
meaning as the Hebrew word ‘Messiah,’ and the same explanation 
holds good of both. We learn the true value and import of the 
latter, when we find that it is applied, in the Old Testament, to 
a heathen king, one who ts made the instrument of executing a par- 
ticular purpose of Fehovah. Cyrus, the king of Persia, was the 
means of putting an end to the captivity of the Jews. Hence 
the later Isaiah says of him, ‘ Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, 
to Cyrus.’ Literally this might be rendered ‘ to his Messiah,’ the 
same word which in Christian times is applied to Jesus under the 
Greek form of Christ, 

“The term which was applied to Cyrus only incidentally and 
because of a particular purpose, zs used of Fesus as his usual and 
abiding designation ; and he is, therefore, Jesus the Christ, an 
appellation which soon passed into a personal name, and became 
Jesus Christ. But thts fact does not alter the relation between him 
and the Creator which the word denotes. That was the same, in 
truth, as for the time existed between the Almighty Being and 
His chosen instrument the king of Persia. The one was the 
Anointer and the other the anointed ; the one the Sender and the 
other the sent; the one was the Creator and the Source of power, 
the other the creature and the recipient of any authority or 
power which it pleased the Father to confer upon him.” 


200 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“The term Son leads us to the same conclusion. According to 
our usual ideas and experience of human relationships, a soz is, 
indeed, of the same nature with his father. The same or like 
mental and bodily powers belong to both ; and therefore it might 
be inferred, in the case of Jesus, that he, being said to be the 
Son of God, zs tn all respects of the same essential nature as the Being 
of whom he ts so often termed the Son. And this is constantly 
either expressly affirmed, or tacitly assumed, by orthodox writers, 
But granting this, there is at least one important point in which 
the word necessarily implies inferiority, according to all ordinary 
ideas and the usual force of human language—except, indeed, 
among persons who are satisfied to set human language at defiance, 
and speak of ‘ Eternal Sonship,’ and pledge their ministers at or- 
dination to believe in it. A son, at all events, is younger than his 
Sather, so that to speak of eternal sonship is something like speaking 


of an eternal fifty years.” 


“Of course I am aware of the cheap way of meeting these state- 
ments, which is coming to be so common, viz., sneering at them 
as the ‘invention of infidels,’ declaring that they are ‘as old as 
Christianity,’ ‘and have been answered a thousand times over.’ To 
this I only care to say—they are not the “invention of infidels,’ 
or of anybody else; they are simply obstinate facts, that refuse 
to accommodate themselves to the wish of either ‘infidel’ or 
Christian. As to their being ‘as old as Christianity,’ this is true; 
that isto say, careful and unprejudiced students of the Bible from 
the earliest ages have perceived contradictions in it, though with the 
lapse of time and the advance of biblical scholarship, she 
number of these contradictions discovered has constantly increased. 
As to their having been ‘ answered a thousand times,’ I have only 
to say, they have been replied toa thousand times—they have 
never been answered at all.” 


“So far from its being painful to give up the doctrine of 
Biblical Infallibility, I hesitate not to say that, just in so far as 
one has the spirit and love of Christ, and at the same time com- 
prehends intelligently the points at issue, he will rejoice to 
be able to give it up; and what Uittle comfort there may be in 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 201 


eee a 
thinking he has an infallible guide, he will gladly sacrifice to the 


larger and better results. Asa matter of fact there is not the 
least justification for ‘ orthodox’ writers and preachers, when 
they say that those who question the infallibility of the Bible are 
undermining the hope of man.”’ 


“Who, then, is the God of evolution? Not the mechanical 
contriver, or the Oriental despot of the Old Testament ; not the 
Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazoa, ruling but half the world ; not the 
Hindoo Brahm asleep in the heavens; not a deity dwelling in 
temples, and only to be sought at special altars; not the partial 
and implacable God of Calvin ; not one sitting afar on his throne, 
to be reached only through mediators. The righteousness which 
is by evolution speaketh on this wise : Say not in thy heart, Who 
shall ascend into heaven to bring him down ? nor, Who shall de- 
scend into the deep to bring him up? But what satth it? God 
is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. And tt says this 
with a reality and meaning never satd before. Or it borrows the 
beautiful and mystic tongue of Wordsworth, and speaks of 

‘A sense sublime — 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; 
A motion and a spirit that impels 


All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.’ ” 


“Now, then, what can science do for religion? Science has 
been doing for hundreds of years one of the greatest services 
possible. It has been destroying the superstitions, the crudities, 
the falsehoods, the misconceptions of men concerning religion. 
For example, the doctrines of astrology, of demoniacal posses- 
sion, of witchcraft, the doctrine of the material resurrection of 
the body, of a material hell just under the surface of the ground, 
and many others that were once considered central and essential 
parts of religion,—these things which were only hurts and damages, 
barnacles on the ship that hindered tts satling,—these things science 
has stripped off, and thrown away, and utterly destroyed. 


202 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


“I do not wonder that men have cried out against science be- 
cause it has done these things ; for if once a man identifies his 
own thought with the very central life and thought of the universe, 
of course, when you touch him, he thinks the throne of God is 
giving way. But science has reconstructed religious thought : 
that is one thing that it has done for it. Another thing I have 
already enlarged upon. J¢ has heightened infinitely the objects of 
religion, giving us a grander God, a nobler humanity, a more mag- 
nificent universe as the theatre for human action.” 


“God has more truth than is in the Bible ; and the process of 
the ages is but the unrolling of His divinely written scroll. 
What matter, then, though we do not certainly know each step 
we are taking? Are the children of a ship-captain less safe be- 
cause they do not understand the log-book, the quadrant, the 
path of the vessel through the waves? A wise head and a loving 
heart are in the cabin, and a strong and wakeful hand its on the 
wheel, ‘The Captain knows where He is going ; and He knows 
His route ; and the smallest, weakest, and most ignorant child 
shall go sailing up the harbor, and when the anchor is dropped, 
and the boat lowered, shall set foot on the wave-washed, sandy 
beach of the Everlasting Shore, just as surely and safely as the 
Captain Himself. Have faith, then, not in churches, nor creeds, 
nor councils, nor books : ‘ have faith in God’ ; for 


* I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs. 


Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range ; 
Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change. 
Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day.’ 


“T have a great deal of doubt of men,—their thoughts, their 
creeds, and their systems ; but with all my heart and soul T believe 
in God and the future. He has inspired and led in all the past ; 
fle inspires and leads to-day ; He will inspire and lead to-morrow ; 
for ‘ He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.’ ” 


PART SECOND. 


““BUT I HAVE ¢his AGAINST THEE, THAT THOU DIDST LEAVE THY FIRST LOVE. 
REMEMBER THEREFORE FROM WHENCE THOU ART FALLEN, AND REPENT, AND 
DO THE FIRST WORKS; OR ELSE I COME TO THEE, AND WILL MOVE THY CAN- 
DLESTICK OUT OF ITS PLACE, EXCEPT THOU REPENT.” 


‘*? KNOW THY WORKS, THAT THOU HAST A NAME THAT THOU LIVEST, AND 
ART DEAD, BE WATCHFUL, AND STRENGTHEN THE THINGS WHICH REMAIN, 
THAT ARE READY TO DIE: FOR I HAVE NOT FOUND THY WORKS PERFECT 
BEFORE GOD.” 


‘“AND TO THE ANGEL OF THE CHURCH IN SARDIS, WRITE : 

‘““THESE THINGS SAITH HE THAT HATH THE SEVEN SPIRITS OF GOD, AND 
THE SEVEN STARS: I KNOW THY WORKS, THAT THOU HAST A NAME THAT 
THOU LIVEST, AND THOU ART DEAD, BE THOU WATCHFUL, AND STABLISH 
THE THINGS THAT REMAIN, WHICH WERE READY TO DIE: FOR I HAVE 
FOUND NO WORKS OF THINE FULFILLED BEFORE MY GOD. REMEMBER THERE- 
FORE HOW THOU HAST RECEIVED AND DIDST HEAR; AND KEEP 77, AND 
REPENT, IF THEREFORE THOU SHALT NOT WATCH, I WILL COME AS A THIEF, 
AND THOU SHALT NOT KNOW WHAT HOUR I WILL COME UPON THEE. BUT 
THOU HAST A FEW NAMES IN SARDIS WHICH DID NOT DEFILE THEIR GARMENTS: 
AND THEY SHALL WALK WITH ME IN WHITE; FOR THEY ARE WORTHY. HE 
THAT OVERCOMETH SHALL THUS BE ARRAYED IN WHITE GARMENTS ; AND I 
WILL IN NO WISE BLOT HIS NAME OUT OF THE BOOK OF LIFE, AND I WILL CON- 
FESS HIS NAME BEFORE MY FATHER, AND BEFORE HIS ANGELS. HE THAT 
HATH AN EAR, LET HIM HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH TO THE CHURCHES,” 


‘“ AND TO THE ANGEL OF THE CHURCH IN LAODICEA, WRITE: 

‘* THESE THINGS SAITH THE AMEN, THE FAITHFUL AND TRUE WITNESS, THE 
BEGINNING OF THE CREATION OF GOD: I KNOW THY WORKS, THAT THOU ART 
NEITHER COLD NOR HOT: I WOULD THOU WERT COLD OR HOT, SO BECAUSE 
THOU ART LUKEWARM, AND NEITHER HOT NOR COLD, I WILL SPEW THEE OUT 
OF MY MOUTH. BECAUSE THOU SAYEST, IAM RICH, AND HAVE GOTTEN RICHES, 
AND HAVE NEED OF NOTHING ; AND KNOWEST NOT THAT THOU ART WRETCHED, 
AND MISERABLE, AND POOR, AND BLIND, AND NAKED : I COUNSEL THEE TO BUY 
OF ME GOLD REFINED BY FIRE, THAT THOU MAYEST BECOME RICH ; AND WHITE 
GARMENTS THAT THOU MAYEST CLOTHE THYSELF, AND that THE SHAME OF 
THY NAKEDNESS BE NOT MADE MANIFEST ; AND EYESALVE TO ANOINT THINE 
EYES, THAT THOU MAYEST SEE, AS MANY ASI LOVE, I REPROVE AND CHAS- 
TEN: BE ZEALOUS THEREFORE, AND REPENT. BEHOLD, I STAND AT THE DOOR 
AND KNOCK : IF ANY MAN HEAR MY VOICE AND OPEN THE DOOR, I WILL COME 
IN TO HIM, AND WILL SUP WITH HIM, AND HE WITH ME. HE THAT OVER- 
COMETH, I WILL GIVE TO HIM TO SIT DOWN WITH ME IN MY THRONE, AS I 
ALSO OVERCAME, AND SAT DOWN WITH MY FATHERIN HIS THRONE. HE THAT 
HATH AN EAR, LET HIM HEAR WHAT THE SPIRIT SAITH TO THE CHURCHES,” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 203 

ep cn eee etl lL Sita Re ak PAu UOTE Oe. Ei ts A 

LXI.—EMPIRICISM AND EVOLUTIONISM VERSUS INTUITION- 
ALISM AND CREATIONISM. 


THE various schools of Philosophy and Science—rather of 
scientific-Philosophy or of philosophical-Science—are now, 
more eagerly than ever, contending for Truth as indicated 
by such methods as those above named. Renascent Chris- 
tianity, here, as on questions of Theology and of Ecclesiasti- 
cism in general, occupies the middle ground. 

Intuition is accumulated experience: and the accumulated 
experience of all the past plus the experience of the present 
life (the present incarnation of the human individual) is what 
is called empiricism. Evolution is gradual unfolding ; and 
gradual unfolding is the one and only observed method of 
Creation. So, of the empiricist and of the dutuitionalist, of 
the evolutionist and of the creationist, we may say: ‘ You 
are both right and both wrong, the Truth lies between you.” 
All knowledge of Truth comes, ever has and must come, to 
man from the gradual experience of the individual in con- 
nection with the systematized experience of the race. The 
Universe, in all its parts and details, is forever a gradual un- 
Solding and becoming rather than suddenly created or super- 
naturally perfected—i. e., mechanically produced and con- 
trolled. 

The experience of the individual hitched on to the Sys- 
tematized experience of Mankind, and individual unfoldings 
added to the (scientifically observed) unfoldings of the Uni- 
verse, this is, seemingly, the true method of Human Knowl- 
edge and the only one that is adequate or wise. 

From such interpretations of Man and the Universe many 
luminous and helpful teachings have come. Chief among 
them are the following dzstinctions which bear directly upon 
the general method and contents of this volume: 

(2) Traditional or “orthodox” Christianity, from the 
Fourth Century downward, has been based on one or an- 
other form of what is now called zztudztionalism in Philosophy 
and (mechanical or supernatural) creationism in Science. Its 
attitude has been, is, and must be face-backward. On the 


204 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


other hand Materialism and Agnosticism, in all their forms, 
have always been based on what are now called empiricism 
and evolutionism. Their attitude has been, is, and must be 
face-forward. Primitive Christianity and its present revival, 
which we call renascent Christianity, being essentially eclec- 
tic, is based on the common truths of both sides and of all 
sides. Hence its attitude was in the beginning, is now, and 
must be Janus-like—doth backward and forward. It avoids 
extremes, rejects mere speculations (philosophic, scientific, 
and theologic alike) and combines into one ever-accreting 
and hence ever-living and ever-growing System, all verifiable 
facts of human experience and observation. It looks with- 
in and without, up and down, backward and forward, yes, 
and all around (‘see that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools 
but as wise”) and whatever it sees, and is sure it sees, that it 
accepts—and nothing else. It includes origins and results, 
the past avd the future, the descent of man azd the ascent, 
experience avd intuition, evolution and creation, the termi- 
nus a quo avd the terminus ad quem. The questions of 
traditional Christianity on the one hand and of Materialism 
and Agnosticism on the other are important; but primitive 
Christianity revived (that is renascent Christianity) includes 
them all—simply because it, and it only, is eclectic. As to 
methods, the one extreme says: In order to know truth and 
avoid errors pray. The other extreme says: Prayer is super- 
stitious and useless—think. Eclecticism says: Pray and 
think—the two great commandments are, first, Thou shalt 
think and, second, Thou shalt pray (“Watch and pray”); 
on these two commandments hang all the laws of safety 
and of salvation; ¢he two must go together ; each is a hemi- 
sphere, incomplete and worse than useless without the 
other. Again, one extreme teaches: Avoid the evil zz order 
to attain the good. The other extreme teaches: Seek the 
good zz order to escape the evil. Eclecticism says: “ Abhor 
that which is evil and cleave to that which is good, : 
prove all things and hold fast that which is good.” Error 
is the only evil and Truth is the only good, abhor that and 
love this with all thy mind as well as with all thy heart: so 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 205 


shalt thou walk in safety and attain to a present and perpet- 
ual experience of Eternal Life. But, zake notice ; abhor- 
rence of Error and love of Truth is not passionate desire to 
get the beliefs of others overthrown and my own beliefs 
confirmed ; rather is it passionate desire to get all shams over- 
thrown and all vealitzes confirmed—even should it involve 
the shattering of all my systems and the establishment of 
those I now deem heretical or false. Let se/f be forgotten, 
let systems be excluded, let nothing be hated but shams and 
nothing desired but vealitzes; thus, and only thus, canst 
thou follow Jesus the Christ and attain the experience of his 
promise “Ye shall know Truth and Truth shall make you 
irecen 

(2) A second difference is that of /zberty as distinguished 
from slavery to Law on the one hand and slavery to Logic 
on the other ; this is categorical bondage and that dogmatic, 
this is called Consistency of Thought and that Conformity 
of Belief. Both alike are enslaving to mind and heart, and 
the Eclecticism of renascent Christianity breaks off the fet- 
ters and exclaims “ Stand fast therefore in the liberty where- 
with Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again 
with the yoke of bondage.” 

Traditional Christianity commands all to delzeve what has 
always been believed—“ the faith once delivered to the 
saints.” Materialism and Agnosticism alike command all to 
think what the laws of thought compel—“ The Categorical 
wmperative.’ Eclecticism (which is true Christianity) rejects 
both the “ once delivered’ of Dogmatism and the “ impera- 
tive” of Logic; it commands nothing, but “ Be pure in 
heart’ and “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear;” it 
condemns all yokes of Belief and burdens of Consistency, and 
commends in their place the yoke of Love and the burden 
of Duty—“‘ Come unto me all that are weary (with yokes of 
Traditional Belief) and heavy laden (with Categorical Im- 
peratives) and I will give you rest.” 

In soul-life as in body-life and mind-life fluency is essential 
to health and happiness. When the respiratory, circulatory 
or other normal motions of the body are obstructed there 


206 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


result distress and disease. When normal intellectual pro- 
cesses are interrupted there result mental distress and dis- 
ease. So, and in like manner, spiritual distress and disease 
result from any obstruction or restraint of the normal inves- 
tigations or aspirations of the soul. Fluency, in other words 
Sreedom, is essential to Soul-life as it is to body-life and 
mind-life. Hence any authority, creed, or book imposed as 
wnfallible and binding upon the Soul throttles and enslaves 
it—chokes its respiration, impedes its activities and ulti- 
mately produces disease and distress. No such imposi- 
tions were made or permitted by Jesus the Christ, or by 
Apostolic Christianity :—no forced options, no compelled 
convictions, but (as the Book of Common Prayer well states 
it) “ perfect freedom.” 

The formulated beliefs of renascent Christianity, like those 
of primitive Christianity, must not be strait-laced, must not 
divide “heresy” from “orthodoxy” by any sharp-drawn 
line. ‘There must be left over and above the proposition 
to be subscribed, ‘ubzque, semper, et ab omnibus, another 
realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic 
scruples and indulge zts own faith at its own risks.” 

So taught the Founder of Christianity: “Why, even of 
yourselves judge ye not what is right? . . . Man, who 
made me a ruler or adivider over you? . . . Neither 
do I condemn thee. . . . I judge no man.” 

So taught also the chief Apostle: “Brethren, ye have 
been called unto liberty. . . . Who art thou that judg- 
est another man’s servant ? To his own Master hestandeth 
or falleth, . . . Let every man be fully persuaded in 
his own mind. . . . Every one of us shall give account 
of himself to God. . . . Let us not therefore judge one 
another any more.”’ 

(c) A third and final difference is the following: Material- 
ism and Agnosticism alike are forever asking the old ques- 
tion of Pilate (half-doubtingly and half-sneeringly) What is 
Truth? and, because they ask it of empiricism and of evolu- 
tionism alone, no satisfying answer has ever yet come to 
them. On the other hand Traditionalism (of every sort) 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 207 


has forever asked the same question of zutuztionalism and of 
creationism alone; and, as a consequence, have received 
nothing but the ancient half-answer (with which none but 
dormant minds and stagnant souls can be satisfied)—“ Truth 
is a deposit long ago and once for all supernaturally made.” 
Eclecticism, in the form of primitive and of renascent Christi- 
anity, asks the question of Experience aud of Intuition, of 
Evolution avd of Creation; and, from the combined voices, 
receives the reply: “Truth is God zmminent and incarnate 
both in Nature and in Man—the eternal Logos always self- 
revealing.” 

New light ever makes new truth. To believe that any 
phase of Truth that mankind has yet observed is abso- 
lute, final, and unchangeable is “A weakness of our na- 
ture from which we should free ourselves as fast as we 
can. . . . I sincerely believe that this course is the only 
one we can follow as reflective men, . . . to besurewe 
must go on experiencing and thinking over our experiences, 
for only thus can our opinions grow more true ; but to hold 
any one of them—TI absolutely do not care which—as if it 
never could be reinterpretable or corrigible, I believe to be 
a tremendously mistaken attitude; and I think that the 
whole history of philosophy will bear me out.” 

These are recent words of one whom we all revere as our 
highest living authority in the reverent and broad interpreta- 
tions of Philosophy and Science from the theistic stand- 
point—a venerable and venerated Professor in Harvard 
University. They only confirm what true Eclecticism has 
always taught, namely :—Truth, though in its substance un- 
changeable, in its Jogos or self-revealings is manifold and 
progressive: its phases are (like itself) infinite and always 
adapted to the expanding powers of the finite mind and the 
increasing immaculateness of the human heart. Therefore 
it must be self-evident that Mew light ever makes new truth. 
Also it follows; as a method, that The desire for Truth is 
what brings tts self-revealings. The more eager and persist- 
ent the desire, the quicker and more fully will Truth come. 
Ardent desire is the soul’s effective wooing of Truth; she 


208 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


flies to the arms of those who ardently desire her. As Jesus 
said “Be asking” (ask eagerly and persistently), “‘be seek- 
ing ”’ (in the same way), “be knocking” (in the same way), 
and “ye shall receive, ye shall find, it shall be opened 
unto you.” For to every one who has ever ¢hus asked, 
sought, and knocked, Truth has responded with assuring and 
loving self-revelations. 


LXII.—TENDENCIES TO REVERT AND TO DEGENERATE 
HISTORICALLY CONFIRMED. 


OuT of thousands of historic confirmations of the main 
theory and warning of this volume, that of the reversions and 
degenerations of Christianity, we will here notice but one. 

In 1485, the Pope who is known as Innocent VIII. issued 
a bull enjoining the persecution of the Waldenses, even to 
their extermination. He, as the mouthpiece of God, 
promised absolution for this life and highest seats in Para- 
dise to whatever rogues, sensualists, or outlaws who should 
profess the Catholic Faith and join to exterminate the here- 
tics. Asaresult, writes a Vaudois historian: ‘‘ There is no 
town in Piedmont where some of our brethren have not 
been put to death. Jordan Terbano was burnt alive at 
Susa; Hippolite Rossiero at Turin; Michael Sonato, an 
octogenarian, at Sarcena; Vilermin Ambrosio hanged on 
the Col di Meano; Hugo Chiambs of Fenestrelli, had his 
entrails torn from his living body at Turin; Peter Gaymoroli 
of Bobbio in like manner had his entrails taken out in Lu- 
cerna, and a fierce cat thrust in their place to torture him 
further; Maria Romano was buried alive in Rocco Patia; 
Magdalena Teauno underwent the same fate at San Gio- 
vanni; Susana Michelini was bound hand and foot, and 
left to perish of cold and hunger on the snow at Sarcena; 
Bartholomeo Foche, gashed with sabres, had the wounds 
filled up with quicklime, and perished thus in agony at 
Fenilo; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn out at Robo 
for having praised God; James Boridari, perished covered 
with sulphurous matches which had been forced into his 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 209 
Se 
flesh, in his nostrils, mouth, and all over the body, and then 
lighted. Daniel Rovelli had his mouth filled with gun- 
powder, which being lighted, blew his head to pieces. 
Sarah Rostignol was split open from the legs to the bosom, 
and left so to perish on the road between Eyral and Lu- 
cerna; Anna Charbonnier was impaled and carried thus on a 
pike from San Giovanni to La Torre "—and much more of 
the same sort. 

Other historians of that period record numerous similar 
facts such as these :—“In one year (1485) forty women were 
executed in Burbia as being bewitched or possessed of the 
Devil.” “Peasants in the vicinity of Déles were authorized,by 
parliamentary license, to hunt, as wild beasts, men, women, 
and children afflicted with the disease of Demonomania, who 
were called Werewolves.” “In the electoral see of Tréves, 
within a few years, six thousand five hundred men were 
executed as enchanted, bewitched, and possessed of the 
Devil.” “The ministers held it to be imperatively requisite 
to bring the whole power of justice against devil-worshippers ; 
hundreds of human beings were burnt or incarcerated. The 
judges worked the rack actively in order to get complete 
confessions from the bewitched and from those who were 
supposed to be sold to the Devil.” The Church itself 
sowed the seed and richly fertilized it through its supersti- 
tious Dogmas and fanatical Teachings; then, when the crop 
of heretics and of fanatics appeared it proceeded to torture 
them or to cut off their heads. All this at the beginning 
of the Sixteenth Century. And it is only a fragment of 
what has been done, zx the name of Christ, by Protestants 
and by Patriarchists, as well as by Papists, from the Athana- 
sian triumph at Nicewa down to this day! The latest out- 
croppings of the same degenerate spirit are such e¢ ceteras 
as the Andover and Union Theological Seminary Heresy 
Trials; denominational exclusions of “open communion- 
ists;” sectarian excommunications of those who doubt the 
saving power of Atoning Blood; Papal Edicts and Pastoral 
Letters dictating exactly what all “true Churchmen” must 


hold and teach; the bitter reproaches and threatenings 
14 


210 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


of “Orthodoxy” poured forth upon the devoted heads and 
consecrated lives of such reformers of to-day as were the 
late Phillips Brooks and Professor Drummond, and as are Dr. 
Watson, Dr. Abbott, Professor Harper, and other con- 
servative leaders of the New Criticism—to say nothing of 
the unceasing condemnations and crucifixions of Unitarians 
and of all others who question the Supreme Deity of Jesus 
the Christ, on the ground that he never called himself nor in 
the New Testament is called by any higher name than that 
of Son of Man and Son of God. 


Almost every daily newspaper brings some account of Heresy-persecutions. 
On the date of this writing appears the following : ‘‘ The Protestant Episcopal 
Bishop of , who is generally beloved for his virtues, esteemed for his 
talents, and admired as one who has the courage of his convictions, is accused 
of heresy by no less than fifty local ministers of all Evangelical Sects. Formal 
charges have been drawn up and signed by these ministers, and great excitement 
over the matter prevails in all the religious circles of the State. Denial of the 
Trinity, of the miraculous birth of Christ, and of bodily Resurrection are the 
main charges.” 


Degenerate Christianity has out-paganed Paganism in its 
bigotry, intolerance and persecutions for full fifteen hundred 
years past. Even Mohammedanism can hardly show so 
bitter and bloody a record. But ’t is ever thus—the higher 
the attainment the deeper the fall, the more lofty the genxuzne 
Religion the more ignominious its corruption and decay. 


In an article on the late Professor Harry Drummond by “‘ Ian Maclaren” in 
the May number of the 7%e North American Review the following passage 
occurs, which is of special interest as bearing upon the recent heresy trial of its 
author by the synod of the English Presbyterian Church : 

‘When one saw the unique and priceless work which he (Dr. Drummond) 
did, it was inexplicable that the religious world should have cast this man, of 
all others, out, and have lifted up its voice against him. Had religion so many 
men of bountiful and winning life, so many thinkers of wide range and genuine 
culture, so many speakers who could move young men by hundreds towards the 
kingdom of God that she could afford to have the heart to withdraw her confi- 
dence from Drummond? Was there ever such madness and irony before 
heaven as good people lifting up their testimony and writing articles against 
this most gracious disciple of the Master, because they did not agree with him 
about certain things he said or some theory he did not teach, while the world 
lay around them in unbelief and selfishness, and sorrow and pain? ‘ What can 
be done,’ an eminent evangelist once did me the honor to ask, ‘to heal the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 211 


Seta arr ey ne EE Eee MNES tad 


breach between the religious world and Drummond,’ and I dared to reply that 
in my poor judgment the first step ought to be for the religious world to repent 
of its sins and make amends to Drummond for its bitterness, The evangelist 
said it was unlikely to do any such deed, and I did not myself remember any 
instance of repentance on the part of the Pharisees,” 


A recent correspondent of “ The Observer,” a Presbyterian 
Journal of New York, has discovered the fatal defect in Pro- 
fessor Drummond’s Theology. He attended some of his lec. 
tures and “in one of them” erroneous views were presented 
with reference to the Doctrine of the Atonement! The same 
Journal, commenting on the large number of persons re- 
cently admitted to membership in Plymouth Church, Brook- 
lyn, exclaims: “ A mere roster of converts means little unless 
we know what sort of converts they are!” This isthe same 
remark long and often made “ by skeptics and scoffers ” with 
reference to the sum-totals of professed Christians as prof- 
fered evidences of the truth of Christianity, and in criticism 
of the argument from numbers for the superiority or spiritual 
worth of any particular church or sect. And it is as perti- 
nent in the latter case as in the former. In either case and 
in all cases “a mere roster of converts,” though it should 
amount to millions or hundreds of millions of names, is no 
certain evidence of truth or worth. Non multa, sed multum 
—not many, but much; not quantity, but quality. “And 
Jew there be that find it.” 


LXIII.—THE PRESENT DEGENERATION OF OUR CHURCHES. 


AT a recent Bi-Centennial Jubilee of Trinity Church in 
New York City a well-known Episcopal Rector was brave 
enough to say, as reported by the Daily Newspapers :— 
“The great sin of to-day is that of giving too much promin- 
ence to the rich in our Churches.” “ During my 15 years 
in New York I have seen the city’s population south of 
Fourteenth street, increased by the addition of 100,000 
souls. In the same period I have witnessed the sad specta- 
cle of 19 churches moving farther uptown. Can any man 
be blind to the fact that it has been and is the policy, nolens 


212 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


volens, to take spacious churches away from the people who 
most urgently need them?” “ Another thing we want zs 
freedom of speech in our pulpits. We hem and haw; we 
wait foracue. The times in which we live demand some- 
thing more than that. Let our clergymen be beyond the 
control of monetary considerations.” 

He might well have continued his criticisms, and given 
them especial emphasis, in application to four main and 
growing evils in all the Protestant Sects, vzz.- Proprietor- 
ship of Pews, Rich Men’s Churches and Poor Men’s Churches, 
Fat-salaries and Starving-salaries, and Sensational-Worship 
instead of Gospel-Worship. 

(2) No Church is worthy to be called Christian in which 
there is a square foot of space that is not open to all alike 
without any stzpulated price. 

(6) No Church is worthy to be called Christian in which 
the rich and the poor do not meet together with fraternal 
and cordial recognitions. 

(c) No Church is worthy to be called Christian which per- 
mits what are known asits “ popular’ and “ talented ”’ minis- 
ters to feast while those who fail to attain these flattering 
distinctions must fast. As the first ministers of Christ had 
“all things in common,” so always should there be a’ com- 
mon fund from which all who are received as ministers of 
Christ should have a community of support, justly propor- 
tioned to their several circumstances and needs. No one 
should have more, and no one less, than what might fairly 
be called a comfortable livelihood. Such a method would be 
truly Christian and would effectually forestall that wide- 
spread bribery—in the way of luxurious salaries and large 
perquisites—which now ties tongues, seals lips, and elicits soft 
words and smooth flatteries, from what is called the Pulpit. 

(2) And finally :—No Church is worthy to be called Chris- 
tian which rejects the simplicity, fervor, plainness, and 
pointedness of Gospel-Worship—as pictured and patterned 
in the New Testament—substituting in its place the Sensa. 
tional Worship of noise or of novelty, of elaborate ritual or of 
mere esthetic effect. A// of these ave sensational; the xozse 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 213 


eee 


of the Salvation Army, the novelty of the Pulpit-Crank, the 
pageant of the elaborate Ritual and the studied softness and 
soothingness of the Program of Service—all alike are Sensation 
and not Gospel. No true Christian Church ever has toler. 
ated them or ever will; it is only degenerate Christianity 
that can devise or welcome them. 

Whenever our Clergy will vigorously attack these “four 
main and growing evils in all the Protestant Sects” and con- 
tinue the attack till they are somehow remedied, Christianity 
will spring up anew and begin again to be the same reform- 
ing and regenerating power in all the world that it was in 
the Apostolic age and in the two succeeding centuries. 

To the plea for more moderate salaries and fewer perqui- 
sites for ministers of the Rich-men’s Churches and more 
equalized support for all the Clergy in general, it is com- 
monly objected that “superior talent and worth should have 
superior pay.” To which we reply: 

“What then! Is the reward of Virtue, bread?” 1s money 
“the measure of the man’? In these money-grasping, 
every-thing-by-money-measuring days, ’t is a shame that any- 
one called a minister of Christ should be found grasping with 
the rest ; should allow his “talent and worth”’ to be meas- 
ured and rewarded by money, or by anything that money 
can procure. Magnificent church edifices, fashionable con- 
gregations, exquisite music, enriched rituals, elegant par- 
sonages, and parson’s pockets filled with gold are foreign 
enough from Gospel Christianity. But when they indicate 
“superior talent and worth” it is high time for some Clergy- 
rebukes and Clergy-reforms similar to those of nineteen cen- 
turies ago when money and applause, as measures of talent 
and worth, were rejected and trodden under foot: when one 
who “had his raiment of camels’ hair, and a leather girdle 
about his loins, and his meat was locusts and wild honey,” 
dared to say to his would-be aristocratic parishioners, “ O, 
generation of vipers”; when one who had “ not where to 
lay his head” said, of the magnificent temple with its mag- 
nificent ritual, crowds of formalistic worshippers, pompous 
priests and overflowing treasury : ‘ Not one stone shall remain 


214 KENASCENT ‘CHRISTIANIT Y, 


upon another that shallnot be throwndown . . . hypo- 


crites, that pray to be seen of men . . . hypocrites, 
that do alms that ye may have glory of men . . . hypo- 
crites, that minister for earthly reward . . ._ behold, 
your house is left unto you desolate”; when one who 


had renounced the highest positions and worldly promises of 
his ancestral “‘ Orthodoxy,” and wrought daily at tent-mak- 
ing that his ‘‘own hands”’ might minister to his “ necessi- 
ties” said: ‘ Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes 
save one, thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned 

to whom gave we place by subjection, no, not for 
an hour . . . those who seemed to be somewhat, whatso- 
ever they were, it maketh no matter to me; God accepteth 
no man's person . . . and when Peter was come to An- 
tioch, I withstood zm to the face, because he was to be 
blamed . . . and the other Jews adssembled likewise 
with him . . . but when I saw that they walked not 
uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel, I said unto 
Peter before them all . . . I am crucified with Christ, 
nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and 
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of 
the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”’; 
when, in short, all those ministers of the Gospel whom the 
world now delights to honor were, like their Divine Master, 
“good shepherds” who came not for salary or applause but 
to “lead out,” to ‘go before,” and to “‘ lay down their lives, 
for the sheep.” 

Moreover it zs xot true that the highest “talent and worth”’ 
are found in what the world calls the “ highest places ’—any 
more in the Church than elsewhere. The discouragements, 
difficulties, and many-sided requirements of the obscure 
Mission, or of the humble Country Parish develop and (if 
faithfully responded to) indicate higher “talent and worth”’ 
than those required, or usually found, in the well-equipped 
Rich-men’s Parishes where everything moves along of its own 
accord. Here money is superabundant for all desired external- 
ities, hundreds of hands are ready to co-operate in all fashion- 
able or formalistic work, the attractions of exquisite music 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 215 
Sr da 


and of luxurious surroundings avail to draw and hold the 
crowds, to be a member and especially a “ communicant ” of 
such a Church is both reputable and profitable ; nothing then 
is needed or (in most cases) is even acceptable in the line of 
“talent and worth” on the part of the minister beyond 
superior attractiveness of person, manners, and voice in con- 
nection with unusual adaptations as a manager, a diplomat, 
and a patron of those who constitute “aristocratic” society. 


In addresses delivered at the Centennial Services of a New England Parish 
the following significant facts, relative to one of its first and most ‘‘ distin- 
guished” pastors, were mentioned :—As a young man of twenty-six years he 
officiated as candidate at Church, The Committee reported, ‘‘ he pares 
an apple and lights a pipe more like a gentleman than any of the other candi- 
dates”—and so he was chosen. His subsequent popularity is suggested when 
we read, ‘* The richest shippers of the city and their negro servants made up 
the congregations chiefly.” Still more so when we learn that the Church and 
its pastor remained neutral throughout the War of the Revolution ; and that 
their successors and descendants in the same city zealously defended Slavery 
and bitterly opposed the Anti-Slavery leaders. While no burning words of 
protest against popular wrong or in advocacy of unpopular right are quoted we 
find such quotations as this : ‘‘ We madea fine appearance as we walked together 
in our gowns and cassocks.” Not in Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, and 
Anglican or Protestant Episcopal Churches alone are such tests of ‘‘ talent and 
worth” found ; but in all the Sects they are beginning to prevail widely. 


“Verily I say unto you They have their reward ”—and let 
them have it; only let them not have a/so the undeserved 
rewards of being exalted, both as those “who seem to be 
pillars ” and as those of “superior talent and worth,” above 
their brethren who are faithful ministers of Christ in obscure 
or humble stations. 

As to the relative requirements of large and rich Churches 
on one hand and of small and poor ones on the other, the 
author is speaking from his own long experience as well as 
wide observation. Of the thirty continuous years of his 
ministry, the first fifteen were spent as Pastor of unusually 
large, intelligent, and wealthy (but, fortunately, not in any 
marked degree “fashionable” or “ aristocratic”) Parishes; 
the last fifteen years have been spent as Rector of small and 
poor Parishes. Whatever “talent and worth” he has, were 
both developed and demanded ss in the first fifteen years 


216 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


than in the last; and, if he has any “treasure in Heaven”’ it 
has accumulated chzefly during this latter period, when, with- 
out any especial regard to “money or price” he has tried to 
be true to that sign and seal of genuine Christianity which its 
Founder himself authorized :—‘‘ The poor have the Gospel 
preached to them.” 

To the Clergy at large, as well as to the World at large, 
how deeply hidden, as yet, is the meaning of those words of 
Jesus, “Verily I say unto you, they have their reward” ; 
and again (as if in explanation) “ There be many that are 
first that shall be last and many that are last shall be first.”’ 


LXIV.—TRUE TO ONE'S OWN SELF AND WORKING IN 
ONE’S OWN WAY. 


THE following passage is from the Table-talk of Luther :— 
*T am radical, plain-spoken, boisterous and disposed to be 
warlike. I seem born to contend against innumerable mon- 
sters and devils. It seems my mission to remove stumps 
and stones, cut away thistles and thorns, and clear the wild 
forests; then Master Philippus (Melanchthon) comes along, 
softly and gently, sowing and watering according to the 
gifts which God has bestowed upon hzm.” So it was, that 
each was contented to do his own work. It should ever be 
thus: Every man true to himself and faithfully putting to 
use whatever gift God has bestowed upon zm. The radical 
and plain-spoken Peter must not try to copy John: if he 
does his Master will rebuke him and say, “‘ What is that to 
thee? follow thou me.” Paul must content himself with 
planting and leave Apollos to water. Transposing some 
well-known words, “You want to be like everybody else; 
don’t do it; one’s enough.” Be yourself; and permit every 
other one to be himself. Do your own work; and do it in 
your own way—leaving results to Him who rules and over- 
rules. Without the radicalism and sharp-speech of Peter, 
Paul, and Luther the conservatism and soft-speech of John, 
Apollos, and Melanchthon would have been as water falling 
upon a rock or as seed scattered upon unploughed ground. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 217 


The Peters, Pauls, and Luthers of the world—being called 
to agitate, protest, and reform——-must always be ready to ac- 
cept the martyr’s obloquy and shame; but, in the midst of 
their essential unpopularity, they may comfort themselves 
by believing that “in duetime,” their words will be accepted 
and their methods approved. They who sow in tears, doubt- 
less shall come with joy at the harvest, bringing their sheaves 
with them. After many days, they who cast their bread 
upon the waters shall find it. At any rate they must scatter 
their seed, speak their word, do their deed as Conscience 
bids them: 


“ When Duty whispers low, ‘thou must,’ 
Ay 


be) 


The soul replies, ‘[ can’ :”’— 


I can and I wé/, leaving the results to Him who rules and 
overrules. 

“With the vision of certain duties to be done, of certain 
outward changes to be wrought or resisted—no matter 
how we succeed in doing them—do them we somehow 
must: for the leaving of them undone is perdition. No 
matter how we feel; if we are only fatthful—the world will 
in so far be safe, and we quit of our debt toward it. Take, 
then, the yoke upon our shoulders; bend our neck beneath 
the heavy legality of its weight; regard something else than 
our feelings as our limit, our master, and our law; be will- 
ing to ‘live and die in its service,—and, at a stroke, we 
have passed from the subjective into the objective philoso- 
phy of things; much as when one awakens from some fever- 
ish dream, full of bad sights and noises, to find one’s self 
bathed in the sacred coolness and quiet of the air of the 
night.” 


LXV.—A RIGHTEOUS DISREGARD OF PUBLIC OPINION. 


THE terms Dissenter, Schismatic, Heterodox, Heretic, Un- 
believer, Infidel, Atheist, Servant of Beelzebub, Child of 
the Devil are all synonymous in the popular conception and 
speech. In every nation, religion, and age this has been so. 


218 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


It is as truly, though not as intensely, so now and here as 
formerly and elsewhere. The commonly accepted opinion 
whatever it may be, is, always and everywhere, called Ortho- 
doxy. The true Religion, as also the true standards in 
Society and in State, is supposed to be whatever the masses 
dictate and delight in. The voice of the Populace is ac- 
cepted as the voice of God. Stand with the majority, and 
you stand presumably on the Lord’s side. Count the votes, 
and the overwhelming suffrage is thought to indicate the 
absolute and final Truth. Say what your constituents want 
you to say (and will pay you well to say) and you are be- 
lieved to speak as “the Spirit giveth utterance.” Above all 
things be popular; for the favor of men is considered to be 
the same thing as the favor of God. “Shout with the mob 
—if there be two, shout with the largest one” :—thus you 
will be called a Conformist and a member of the True 
Church. If you do otherwise you will be a Dissenter, a 
Schismatic—and all the rest, as named above. 

All observing travellers and all intelligent historians tell 
us that this is everywhere and always so—in every Nation, 
in every Society, in every Religion. Moreover the more 
barbarous the Nation, the more uncivilized the Society, the 
more irrational the Religion the more widely and persistently 
is it so. Considering this fact the true disciple of Jesus 
always hears a Voice saying to him, ‘‘ What is that to thee? 
follow thou me.” It is so natural to inquire, What thinks 
this one and that? What is the belief of the multitude? 
What is the opinion of the majority? The New Testament 
answer is: Why, even of yourselves judge ye not what is 
right? Enter ye in at the strait gate and narrow way 
though few there be that find it. Blessed are ye when 
men shall revile you, and persecute you, for my sake; for so 
persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Even 
if wife or husband, parents, children, kindred, friends, and all 
the world oppose you, still take the cross and follow me. 
The simple meaning of all such Bible teachings is this :— 
Conform if you can conform zxtelligently and sincerely, but 
otherwise bravely accept the Dissenter’s reproach and shame. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 219 


Be “ orthodox” if you can be zutelligently and sincerely, but 
otherwise follow Jesus even to Gethsemane and the Cross. 
“What ts that to thee ? follow thou me.” 

Said a popular critic to one of our greatest nineteenth- 
century poets, in criticism of a poem he was about to pub- 
lish, ‘‘ That will never do.” The poet replied, “It must do; 
I know very well that it will be unpopular, but zt must do.” 
The martyr-spirited clergyman of the Church of England, 
whom everybody knows as author of The Eternal Hope, 
published and circulated that “heretical” volume, (in his 
own words) “perfectly well aware of the gravity of what I 
was doing. At last it had become my duty to express my 
convictions unmistakably. ‘While I was musing the fire 
burned, and at last I spoke with my tongue.’ I felt con- 
strained to publicly repudiate doctrines which had been 
almost universally professed and proclaimed by Christians 
for fifteen hundred years. I knew that to do so was an act 
that would cost me dear . . . that I could not escape 
the most savage animadversions. The odium theologicum is 
as virulent and anti-Christain in this day as it ever was. 
The religious newspapers are often as unfair and remorseless 
as the Inquisition itself. . . . A leading clergyman of 
London said to me, ‘ You have spoken out what nearly every- 
one of us secretly believe’; and yet it soon began to rain de- 
nunciations. I was assailed in scores of pamphlets; annihi- 
lated in hundreds of reviews ; lectured against by University 
professors; anathematized by Anglicans, Baptists, and Meth- 
odists. The refutations, the replies, the revilings would 
alone filla small library. . . . Suchisthe ‘eternal spirit 
of the populace’ . . . the anathema Maranatha of tra- 
ditional and partisan theologians.” 

Such is a single one out of very many recent illustrations. 
To proclaim and try to promulgate (or even to quietly pro- 
fess) opinions that are not “orthodox”’ (i. e., popular) is 
almost as much of a reproach, requiring a martyr-spirit to 
endure, in the Church of to-day as in that of the so-called 
Dark Ages; and among Christians almost as persistently as 
among Moslems, Buddhists, and other Pagans. It is the 


220 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


same old intolerance of Orthodoxy that has prevailed through 
all the ages back to the Sabbath Day upon which transpired 
this which follows: 

“And all they in the synagogue, when they heard these 
things, were filled with wrath; and rose up and thrust him 
out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill where- 
on their city was built, that they might cast him down head- 
long.” 

Let us all pray for that heroic grace of Jesus—A righteous 
disregard of popular opinion. 


LXVI.—THE GOLDEN MEAN OF CONTROVERSY. 


THERE is a world of wisdom in the homely words of that 
landlord (portrayed in one of our finest modern works of 
Fiction) who used to close the hot and prolonged debates 
of the famous literary patrons of his Inn with the excla- 
mation, “ Ye are both right and both wrong, gentlemen! 
the truth lies ’atween ye, the truth lies ’atween ye.” It was 
only a plainer way of stating the old lesson of Scylla and 
Charybdis—hold to the mid-stream, avoid extremes, occupy 
the Golden Mean. 

The author of this volume is, and long has been a believer 
in the Golden Mean of all intelligently and sincerely contro- 
verted opinions. In all intelligent and sincere controversy 
each side and every side presents both partial Truth and 
partial Error. Indeed a fraction or fragment of Truth taken 
for the whole Truth is Error: and the only way to overcome 
this kind of Error is to add fraction to fraction, fragment to 
fragment by the eclectic or inclusive (instead of the radical 
or exclusive) method. 

Controversy ceases when extreme (that is exclusive) posi- 
tions are abandoned. When each says to all and all say to 
each, “‘ Truth is broader than any of our systems, broader than 
all our systems and includes them all; come and let us 
reason together ’’—then destruction ends and construction 
begins. 

In polemic periods extremes are forced upon those who 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 221 
oes AiR a Se ak amid A Lok uel arse ie, VO Dice Laas MA 
eagerly desire to destroy some particular error: but when 
that error is destroyed, those who eagerly desire to construct 
Truth in its place abandon extremes, and select their material 
for construction from both sides and all sides. That is, they 
become eclectzcs and are no longer partisans. They discard 
self-made or party-made systems and as soon as they do 
this, find to their joy that “everything fits in.” Truth as 
seen from all sides—everybody an observer, everybody a 
helper, everybody a “‘ Witness for the Lord ”—is what they 
now care for. They have ceased to defend systems and 
seek nothing but Truth. And Truth is infinite; co-exten- 
sive with the Infinite One, of whom it is the eternal and uni- 
versal Logos, or Word, or Revelation. 

This, in Religion as in every other department of human 
thought, is the constructive method. This is Eclecticism, 
or the Golden Mean. Such has been the method of this 
volume. 

The author, adhereing to no party or sect, has sought to 
draw from all parties and all sects whatever is pure, and 
beautiful, and good. He believes that the common truths of 
all Religions constitute True Religion; that this is what 
Jesus the Christ and his Apostles taught; and that this is 
genuine Christianity. Each party or sect observes but a 
single side of zxfinzte-steded Truth. Assured of this no wise 
observer will confine himself to a party or a sect. Yesterday 
he stood with one group and, asa Seer, tried to see what 
they saw; to-day he stands with another; to-morrow he will 
stand with another; and so he will continue to do, if he 
be ¢ruly wise, ‘“‘ World without end. Amen.” The broadest 
of the “ Broad Churches” is the only one that he will belong 
to; and that must be so broad as to include in its cordial 
fellowship every earnest seeker and sincere lover of Truth 
beneath the sun. When it fails to be this, he will protest, 
agitate, dissent—at whatever risk of opprobrium, of poverty, 
or of being ‘“‘cast out.” He will gladly suffer the loss of all 
things and “count them but dung” rather than be separated 
from that love of God which was in Christ Jesus toward all 
who seek for Righteousness and Truth. 


222 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


a cE ee Ke 


Flis must be the Church of the Communion Office in the 
Book of Common Prayer—‘“the blessed company of all 
faithful people.” This is an znvdszble company ; and rather 
than be separated in sympathy and spiritual communion 
from even one of these he will prefer to be cast out, from the 
vistble Church. For he who stands with God stands never 
alone, but has the happy assurance that the blessed majority 
are all about him. “And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I 
pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord 
opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, be- 
hold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire 
round about Elisha.” 

Such is true Churchmanship and true Christianity. 


LXVII.—FRAGMENTS. 
1. Resings and Fallings of Man. 


‘HUMAN History always has been and doubtless will long 
continue to be a succession of risings and fallings of Man, a 
series of “‘ Paradise” lost and regained. In the language of 
Evolutionary-science—“ Struggles for Existence” resulting in 
more or less lofty attainments, followed by Inaction and con- 
sequent decline: ‘“ Survival of the Fittest’ in some ennobled 
characters who create and lead an epoch, thena “ falling away” 
or reversion and degeneration of the masses. Such ever has 
been Human History, and such doubtless it will long con- 
tinue to be; not of necessity, nor of the w#// of God, but 
simply because the inviolable law universally prevails that, 
gong upward requires effort and to cease Srom effort ts to go 
downward. It is difficult to rise, it is easy to fall. “Inthe 
sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread aZ/ the days of 
thy life.” To cease from effort even for a day is to revert, 
and to revert means degeneration or going downward. 


“ This law the immortal gods to men have set 
That, none arrive at Virtue but by sweat.” 


This is recognized as a universal law, ceaseless and invio- 
lable. Effort propels and inaction repels—alike in body, mind, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 223 


and soul: the more vigorous the effort the more rapid the 
ascent, the more complete the inaction the more rapid the 
descent. 

The cardinal vice, the “ besetting sin”? of Human Nature is 
Indolence: physically this is true, mentally still more true, 
and spiritually truest of all. It was this Indolence that 
caused the first highly evolved man and woman (whom His- 
tory tells us about) to degenerate. They ceased to aspire 
and to struggle, then they fe/7; and a period of reversion 
and decay succeeded both to them and to their posterity. 

This is the old story of Adam and Eve and The Fall of 
Man. The story began, though we have no wir?tten or tra- 
ditional records of it (plenty of geological and_ similar 
records) countless ages before the evolution of “ Adam and 
Eve”; and it has been going on, with uneceasing alterna- 
tions of rzseugs and fallings ever since. 


In “Adam's” rise we rose all ; 
In “Adam's” fall we fell all. 


For countless ages to come this will be the summarized 
History of Mankind, as it has been for countless ages past. 
Such is the corporate relation (taught by Science as fully as 
by Scripture) of descendants to ancestors and of ancestors to 
descendants forever and forever. There are no separate 
interests, there is no such thing as zxzdividual salvation. 
The human race, (from the first Amceba-to-ape-developed 
man up to “Adam” and from “ Adam” up to the last 
Kingdom-of-Heaven-established-on-Earth generation), is so 
bound together that—AWZ must rise together and together 
fall, In this sense it is true that in the first Adam’s fall 
““we sinned all,” and in the second Adam’s rise we all rose. 
That was “death,” z¢hzs was “resurrection from the dead.” 
“As in Adam all died, so in Christ ave all made alive.” “TI, 
if I be lifted up will draw all men with me upward.” The 
Ameceba (or whatever other lowest form of individualized 
life) aspiring, and struggling to ascend, starts upon the path 
of “ Eternal Life”’ and carries all its progeny upward with 
it. The Ape (or whatever other higher form of evolving 


224 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


individual life) contented, and ceasing to struggle upward, 
starts backward upon the path of Reversion, of Degeneration, 
or of “Eternal Death” and carries all its offspring down- 
ward with it. 

Such are the risings and fallings of Man. To be contented 
and to cease struggling upward is to revert, to degenerate, Zo 
die ; to aspire and to struggle upward is to have life, and Zo 
have tt more abundantly. This, in both an individual and a 
corporate sense, is a law seemingly universal, eternal and in- 
violable. To neglect it is to be “dead in trespasses and 
sins’’; to conform to it is ‘the Resurrection of the dead, 
and the Life of the world to come. Amen.” Moreover, to 
proclaim it, everywhere and unceasingly, is to “preach the 
Gospel to every creature”; to refuse to thus proclaim it, is to 
be “‘ disobedient to the heavenly vision”’ and to perish with 
“them that perish.’”—‘ Then shall He say also unto them 
on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting 
fire, prepared for the devil and his angels; . . . Verily 
I say unto you, /nasmuch as ye did tt not to one of the least 
of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into 
enduring punishment.” 

From this point of view, common to both Scripture and 
Science, all the evolutionary interpretations of the Universe 
and all the ever-alternating facts of History are clearly ex- 
plained. Ax inviolable law of Aspiration and of upward 
Struggle , conformity to this law brings ever-unfolding life 
and peace, non-conformity brings the opposite. 

This explains all. All the oly precepts of Holy Books, 
all the Zofty maxims of Sages and Saints, all the w7se induc- 
tions and deductions of Philosophy and of Science as well as 
of Theology point to this one law—lead to it, and confirm it. 

“Not to the dor saint, but to the sinner becoming a saint 
the full length, and breadth, and heighth, and depth of life’s 
meanings are revealed.” 

Not the absence of vice, but vice there and virtue old- 
ing tt ever by the throat, seems the ideal human state.” 

The wretch languishing in the felon’s cell may be drink- 
ing draughts of the wine of Truth which are untasted by 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 225 


the so-called favorites of fortune who, content with luxury 
and selfishness, have ceased to struggle for a higher existence 
—both for themselves and for that Humanity of which they 
are an essential part. 

The ascent and the descent of man, the joys and sorrows 
of life, the achievements and failures of the human race, and 
all the processions and recessions of sentient forms of exist- 
ence beneath the sun are natural consequences of conformity 
or of non-conformity to Nature’s inviolable law—Thou shalt 
struggle and help others to struggle upward, and forever 
upward. 


2. Fesus the Fruitage of the Ages, and the Product of His 
Environments. 


THE century which opened the Christian Era was in every 
way remarkable. Being such it could not fail to produce 
remarkable men; and, among the many remarkable men, 
one most remarkable of all. It was the Harvest of the Ages. 
The great saints, sages, and prophets of Israel; philosophers, 
poets, and artists of Greece; law-givers, legislators, and 
heroes of Rome; mystics, dreamers, and “‘ wise men” from 
the East (Persia, India, China) had all combined to scatter 
the seed which, in the first Century came to an abundant 
harvest. Jesus the Christ was its “first fruit,” its finest 
product: and his Religion became its “Garner.” The ante- 
cedents and environments of Jesus could not fail to produce 
him (in a lofty sense) any more than those of Moses, David, 
Isaiah, Sakya Muni, Confucius, Socrates (and hundreds more 
who sprang loftily forth from the teeming soil of teeming 
ages) could have failed to produce them. 

The first Century was not only one of the Golden Eras but 
the Golden Era: the Era of Universal Empire, Peace, Cul- 
ture, Refinement, Toleration, Intellectual Vigor,—of Dog- 
matic Decline and Religious Resurrection, of Ecclesiastical 
Decay and Ethical Renewal. Judea was the centre of it 
all; through it were travelling and in it were dwelling “ de- 


vout men, out of every nation under heaven.” 
15 


2260 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ERS Pe PeA NE UA NA BRM ite ROL ONE Soka 

Out of this best prepared soil of Humanity and most 
teeming life of History, what a mzracle it would have been 
had not at least one mzraculous product issued,—one, as far 
superior to all others as his Era was superior (in remarkable 
antecedents and environments) to all the Eras which pre- 
ceded and succeeded it! 

Such a product was Jesus, mzraculous and yet entirely 
natural; the supreme and yet the typical and prophetic 
fruitage of all the ages. 


3.—External Prosperity and Internal Decay. 


The sharp eye of him who “knew what was in men and 
needed not to be told”’ detected in individuals, and also in 
the institutions of Church and of State alike, the “dead 
men’s bones” within the “ garnished sepulchres ""—the un- 
reality or the “uncleanness”’ beneath gilded and glorious 
exteriors. Such zxdividuals, with whom the Temple and 
the Synagogues were thronged, he constantly rebuked and 
scorned as “ hypocrites’; and such zustztutions, never more 
glorious with external prosperities and pieties, he unceasingly 
predicted would he completely overthrown so that “not one 
stone should remain upon another.” 

In all religions and generations to this day the popular 
individuals and the popular institutions have been of the 
same kind; exteriors regarded, interiors unconsidered—ap- 
pearances, not actualties. This is so because popularity (in 
its wide or “ orthodox” sense) means the judgment of the 
majority; and the majorities have never yet risen to an in- 
tellectual, moral, or spiritual elevation sufficient to enable 
them to form anything but superficial judgments in these 
several departments. Taking advantage of this fact, self- 
seeking individuals and self-parading institutions have al- 
ways flattered the majority into believing that their vote and 
verdict isthe voice of God. Their vote has always been for 
externalities, their verdict for superficialities. So, pretentious 
Hypocricy has flourished, and glittering Emptiness prevailed, 
in State and Church alike (but in Church far more than in 
State) to this day. 


RENASCENT CORISTIANIT Y, 227 


External glory may be the product of internal decay. A 
magnificent show of Piety may co-exist with hearts “ full of 
all uncleanness.” So that stately temples with thronged 
courts, gorgeous adornments, grand rituals, impressive cere- 
monies, and imposing formalities of Worship (even if abun- 
dant charities and humanities of the self-parading sort are 
added) are no certain evidences of vital soul-life in the 
Christianity of to-day more than they were in the Christi- 
anity of the fourteenth century; nor in the Christianity of 
the fourteenth century more than they were in magnzficently 
decaying Judaism at the beginning of the Christian Era. 

Thus far, in the history of every name and form of Re- 
ligion, ‘‘the zenith of formalistic Piety has ever been the 
nadir of ‘ Religion Pure and Undefiled.’”’ Ifsincerity be not 
in the heart, intelligence in the head, and love in the life the 
prosperities, ceremonialisms, and splendors of Religion are 
“only sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.” Sincerity, 
Intelligence, Love—these three are co-essential; “but the 
greatest of all is Love.” 


4.—What Mankind Most Needs. 


Thus far, in the history of all Religions and Theologies, 
the greatest lack has been ¢he historic sense and the logical 
insight combined by which to discriminate between fact and 
fiction, truth and error. Blind credulity and readiness to 
believe ‘‘every word that is told him” without criticism, 
investigation, or caution has been the fatal defect of the 
overwhelming majorities of mankind. “Its cardinal weak- 
ness is to let belief follow recklessly upon lively conception, 
especially when the conception has instinctive liking at its 
Daca nee mV hatysuchepeoplesmostmneed 15 that their 
beliefs should be broken up and ventilated, that the north- 
west wind of Science should get into them and blow their 
sickliness and barbarism away.” 

The masses of men have never read the “ first and great 
Commandment” beyond the word heart—‘ Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart.” It is high time that 


228 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Priest-craft should not only permit but urge them to proceed 
to the next clause—‘and mind.’ Simply this is what 
Renascent Christianity insists upon. Till the “mind” is 
reverenced egually and put to use co-operatively with the 
“heart,” in the love and service both of God and of Man, it 
matters not how much false prophets and hireling-priests 
of all the degenerate Religions combined may say “ Peace, 
Peace !’’—in the name of God and for the welfare of Mankind 
Renascent Christianity will reply, There shall be no Peace ! 


At the date of this writing (May 12, 1897) the Mew York Times has the fol- 
lowing significant and not at all uncommon item: “ Mr. is one of the 
most worthy members of the Church at , and gives freely of his 
means to support it. He is a deacon, and a teacher of a Bible Class, Until a 
few weeks ago he was a firm supporter of the Rey. , the pastor of the 
church. Recently the Rev. heard that Mr. was inculcating the 
doctrine of an intermediate state, and he denounced the theory as heresy, 
Hot words passed between the men and the controversy has extended until it 
has involved the whole church. ‘ 

The names given by the newspaper are here left blank. The church is 
located within a hundred miles of New York City and its Pastor is called a 
Protestant. If it were located in Central Africa or in the South Sea Islands, 
or if its Pastor were a Romanist or a Mohammedan: or even if such intolerant 
Protestants were not the rule but rather exceptions, the circumstance might pass 
without notice. 

As it is, the least that can be said of such ‘‘ Pastors” and ‘‘ Protestants ”’ is to 
quote the words of the Master to similar teachers and leaders of his day: ‘* Ye 
have taken away the key of knowledge, ye entered not in yourselves, and them 
that were entering in ye hindered. . . . Blind guides, which strain at a 
gnat, and swallow a camel.” 


5.—Faith and Works, or Answering our own Prayers. 


In a section preceding it was affirmed that Eclecticism 
(or Renascent Christianity) combines all that is true and 
good in both of the opposing Systems known as Supernatur- 
alism and Naturalism. 

The relative conceptions and methods of these three dif- 
ferent schools of interpretation may be illustrated by the 
following :—A gentleman calling on friends, found a bright 
little girl much grieved that her brother was making a trap 
to catch birds. A few days later, calling again, he asked 
her “‘ What about the trap?” She said, “I first went out and 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 229 


told the birds not to go near the trap; but that same day 
one was caught. The next day I asked the Lord to keep 
the trap from catching them ; but it caught two before noon. 
Then I prayed the Lord #o help me to keep the birds from 
getting caught, and I went out and kicked the trap all to 
pieces.”’ So the Naturalist apostrophizes Nature, and awaits 
results; the Supernaturalist prays to the Lord, and awaits 
results; the Matural-Supernaturalist or Eclectic prays the 
Lord to help, and then goes to work vigorously and £zcks 
the trap to pieces. Neither Nature nor Providence ever does 
for man anything that he is competent to do himself, by 
using the faculties and powers with which he is endowed. 
Every man is thus endowed for the attainment of all that it 
is wisest for him to have in the present life; to recognize, 
reverence, and use to their utmost those endowments is, of 
ttself, Prayer. True Prayer asks for nothing (of a worldly 
or temporal nature) but that Indolence and Cowardice may 
be overcome, and that Industry and Courage may be 
aroused sufficient to do with one’s might whatever one’s 
hands find to do. To drive out Sloth and Fear and to 
cultivate Energy and Bravery (toward all that is true, and 
beautiful, and good) is to invoke both Nature and the Super- 
natural. 

Petition for the stimulus and the will to do what one 
ought and can is the wise man’s only (personal) prayer. 
This prayer he will pray with every effort and with every 
breath. In the same way for everything received or accom- 
plished, enjoyed or secured he will devoutly give thanks. 

Such are the Faith azd Works, the Prayer and Thanks- 
giving of Eclecticism, which is ¢rwe Christianity. “ Pray 
without ceasing: in everything give thanks.” 


LXVIII.—_THE SPIRIT AND NOT THE LETTER OF THE 
CREEDS. 


IN attempting to give a modern meaning to the ancient 
formularies of Historical Christianity, in the preceding 
pages, the position was taken that, in every department of 


230 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Religious Interpretation (the same as in the Bible), it is 
equally and ceaselessly true that “the letter killeth, but the 
spirit giveth life.”’ 

The scholarly and beautifully conservative book (of one 
of our most Christ-like modern Divines), well known as 
Orthodoxy, Its Truths and Errors, elaborates this position 
in the spirit of the New Testament. We may take a funda- 
mental illustration—that of the dogma of the “ Trinity.” 
After showing its popular errors and urging their rejection, 
the author says of its truth: ‘‘ The Father, the Son, and the 
Holy Ghost are not merely different names for the same 
thing, but they indicate three different Revelations, three 
different views which God has given of His character, and 
which taken together constitute the total Divine Represen- 
tation. . . . This Trinity of Manifestations is founded 
in the truth of things, and is also according to the teachings 
of the greatest Fathers of the Church. There is no ante- 
cedent objection to the form of the Trinity as a threefold 
mantfestation of the Divine Being; and we have only to ask, 
Is it ¢rwe asa matter of fact? Has sucha threefold mani- 
festation of God actually taken place? We reply that it is 
so. According to observation and experience, as well as to 
scripture, we find, such to) beithe fact.) yi Accord tam 
to the New Testament the Father would seem to be the 
source of all things: the Creator, the Fountain of being and 
life. The Son is spoken of as the manifestation of that 
Being in Jesus the Christ. The Holy Ghost is spoken of as 
a spiritual influence proceeding from the Father and the 
Son, dwelling in the hearts of believers as a source of their 
life—the idea of God seen in Causation, in Reason, and in 
Conscience—as making the very life of the soul itself. 

There are these three classified Manifestations of God, and 
we know of no others. They are distinct from each other 
in form, but the same inessence. They are not merely three 
names for the same thing, but they are real personal Mani- 
festations of God, real Subsistencies, since God is personally 
present in all of them, . . ., There is, therefore, an €s- 
sential truth hidden in the idea of the Trinity. While the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 231 


church doctrine in every form which it has hitherto taken 
has failed to satisfy the human zzftel/ect, the Christian heart 
has clung to the substance contained in them all. . . . A 
simple unity, as held by the Jews and Mohammedans, and by 
some Christian imitators, may be a da/d unity and an empty 
unity. This it certainly is when it shows us God withdrawn 
from Nature, from Christ, from the Soul; not z7zmanent, but 
outside of them. This is to make Nature godless; Christ 
merely human; the Soul a machine, moved by an external 
impulse, not by an inward inspiration. Such is the practical 
view of the Trinity, when rzghtly understood.” 

The substance of this citation seems to be as follows: 
The /etter of the doctrine of the Trinity is that there are 
three persons in one God; its sfzret is that there is one God 
in three personal Manifestations. Of all Unitarians and 
Trinitarians alike the common ground is that there is One 
God, and that He is a person in some unspeakably glorious 
and expanded sense of that word. This personality of God, 
being an infinite mystery, should only be affirmed and 
trusted in; it should not be defined except in its Manifesta- 
tions. These Manifestations, as classified, are three—in the 
language of Science they are Causation, Reason, and Con- 
science; in the language of Theology they are Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost: these Three are One, or, One zs in the 
Three. Simply this is the spirit of the doctrine of the 
Mrinity edie eclseapeloncse toa thesletterwanden they letter. 
killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” 


LXIX.—MODERN USE OF ANCIENT IDEAS AND TERMS. 


The Philosophy of which Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and 
Philo were successively chief expositors (which was an Eclec- 
ticism of all widest learning and deepest thought of the 
entire world down to the first century), furnished Apostolic 
Christianity with many of its most effective ideas and terms. 
Among these were especially the following: 

(2) “ Logos,” or Word of God: teaching (what before 
had been, and even now is, but very narrowly and imper- 


232 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


fectly apprehended) the Divine zazmanence in Nature and 
incarnation in Man; or God zz Nature and zz Man. An 
ever-present God, not an absentee; a speaking God, not a 
silent one, who spake “in the beginning” and has been 
speaking ever since. 


How forcible is all this in the sense of the common German Proverb, 
** Speak that I may know you.” No other self-revelation is so real and satis- 
factory as Speech. Speech is not only the vehicle of Thought but is also its 
incarnation, Speech is Thought embodied and ‘‘ dwelling among us.” Men 
live in their words ; and if men, how much more He who is the One and the 
All! ‘‘ The Speech (Word) wasGod . . . by Him were all things made. 
H{e was made flesh and dwelt among us ; and we beheld His glory.” 


This means a God who is ere as well as everywhere and 
within as well as without: 


‘* Whose body Nature is and God the Soul.” 
“ “Shines tn the stars and whispers in the breeze.” 


“ O ye who seek to solve the knot, 
Ye live in God yet know Him not.” 


“ Closer ts He than breathing, 
And nearer than hands and feet.” 


“ le ts not far from every one of us; for in Him we live 
and move, and have our being.’ “In the beginning was the 
Divine Self-Revealer (Word), and the Divine Self-Revealer 
(Word) was God. . . . All things were made by Him 


- . . Ln Him was life and the life was the light of Men 
- . . and the Divine Self Revealer (Word) was made flesh 
aud dwelt among us.’ ‘“TIand my Father are One... 


as thou Father art in me,and I in Thee, that they also may be 
One nus. . . . Lin them, and Thou in me, that they 
may be made perfect in One.” 

“In him (Jesus the Christ) dwelt all the fulness of the God- 
head bodily, . . . Know ye not that ye (also) are the tem- 
ples of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? 

as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in 
them.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 233 


po ee ee 

All these teachings grew out of the term Logos and the 
ideas unfolded from it. The term itself was in common 
use in all the great schools of Philosophy, especially in that 
of Philo. The ideas had been gradually unfolding in all the 
great Religions of the world, especially in the Jewish, long 
before the time of Socrates. The philosophers of Greece, 
and later of Rome, by no means originated, but only re- 
ceived and transmitted them. As Confucius said, “I only 
hand on,” so they only anded them on to the Founder and 
Fathers of Christianity. What is true of the term Logos 
and its outgrowing ideas, is likewise true of what follows. 

(0) “ Threefold Revelation,” or Trinity: teaching that 
God is zmmanent in Nature, incarnate in Man, and enthroned 
in Conscience. This had been taught vaguely by all the 
great Religions, had been made clear and emphatic by the 
great Philosophers, and finally became a common teaching 
of the Founder and Fathers of Christianity. But the term 
Trinity, and its dogmatic formula, Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost, did not come into popular use till a later century. 

(c) “ Twice-Born” or Born Again; teaching that degree 
or stage of spiritual evolution at which a man first awakens 
(clearly and fully) to the threefold consciousness of God, 
the Soul, and Eternal Life. God-Consciousness, Soul-Con- 
sciousness, and Eternal-Life-Consciousness ; these, one or all, 
could only be experienced by the “ Twice-Born.” A spzrit- 
ual New Birth, absolutely essential to all true knowledge of 
God, of Self, or of Immortality, was a fundamental teaching 
of all the great Philosophers from Socrates to Philo. This 
teaching, too, they did not originate, but only handed on 
with new clearness and emphasis. Christianity received it 
as still more a fundamental teaching and as nothing new. 
Hence the surprise of Jesus when he exclaimed to Nico- 
demus, “ Art thou a ¢eacher in Israel and knowest not these 
things! Ye must be born again. Truly, truly, I say unto 
thee, Except a man be born again he cannot see the King- 
dom of God.” Apostolic Christianity made this the first 
and chief of all its doctrines—the New Birth, or Regenera- 
tion, or receiving the Holy Ghost, or being made Sons of 


234 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ST or rere ree er eR Ls tlie) 


God, or Christ formed within, or the Kingdom of God wthin, 
or “the new man which after God is created in Righteousness 
and true Holiness,” or “hath degotten us again unto a lively 
Hope,” and similar terms everywhere found in the New 
Testament, all having a common meaning. 

(Z) “Altruism” or Self-denial and the Cross: teaching 
that complete self-consecration to God for the service of Man- 
kind that includes every helpful, vicarious, or atoning self- 
renunciation,—even to renunciation of the bodily life itself. 
This teaching also was fundamental with all the great Phi- 
losophers (in the form of Heroism and Martyrdom) and by 
them was handed on with new emphasis to John the Baptist, 
Jesus the Christ, Paul and all the other Apostles and Con- 
fessors of the first centuries. 

Such are illustrations of the ideas and terms which Apos- 
tolic Christianity received as a timely legacy from the great 
Schools of Philosophy which immediately preceded it. 


LXX.—IDEAS AND TERMS FURNISHED BY EVOLUTIONARY 
SCIENCE TO RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


In like manner Evolutionary Science (which also is a simi- 
lar “ Eclecticism of all widest learning and deepest thought 
of the entire world down to the” close of the nineteenth 
century) has furnished Renascent Christianity with many of 
its most effective ideas and terms. 

Among these are especially the four following : 

(2) “Development”; teaching the humble origin and 
gradual evolution of every form of organic or individualized 
life—physical, mental, and spiritual. 

(2) “Struggle for Existence”: teaching that nothing in 
the visible Universe (as thus far revealed) advances or can 
advance to its zdeal unfolding and destiny except by per- 
sistent effort—physical, mental, and spiritual. 

(c) “ Reversion”; teaching that there is, in every devel- 
oping form of organic or of individualized life, a strong and 
persistent tendency to revert (to fall back or to degenerate) 
to original lawless and degraded conditions—of body, or of 
mind, or of soul. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 235 


(dz) “ Survival of the Fittest”; teaching that only those 
who struggle for existence attain, or can attain, their “ideal 
unfolding and destiny ”—which for Mankind, is a pure and 
ennobled life on Earth, issuing into self-conscious Life 
Eternal.* 

Upon these ideas and terms which Evolutionary Science 
has received as a “timely legacy” from all the thought and 
research of the past (expanded, verified, and handed on), must 
the Renascent Christianity of the twentieth century chiefly 
depend to render itself effective and widely understood. 

This volume has been written entirely in the spirit and 
phrase of these ideas and terms—which are now universally 
accepted in all departments of thought and of life (among 
highly civilized people) except in the religious. In the 
religious, too, they must be accepted sooner or later. To 
hasten their acceptance, in some even slightest measure, is 
the devout object and the only hoped for reward of the 
author of these pages. 


* By no means is meant, even in Science, much less in Religion, a merely self- 
ish INDIVIDUAL struggle to exist: but a struggle of co-operation, of fellow-feel- 
ing, and of general helpfulness toward all mankind ; and not only toward all 
mankind but also toward every sentient creature that has capacity for a higher 
life. A struggle to rise by helping others to rise—helping everywhere and always; 
this is what is meant by that Struggle for Existence which resulis in Survival 
of the Fittest, 1. e., of all who are FIT to survive. 

The gold-paved, pearl-gated Heavens of the popular religions filled with harp- 
playing, self-pleasing and self-conceited “ saints” are—in the words of a revered 
and well-known essayist— lubberlands, pure and simple, one and all 
tedium vite is the only sentiment they awaken in our breasts. To our crepuscu- 
lar natures, born for the conflict, the Rembrandtesqgue moral chiaroscuro, the 
shifting struggle of the sunbeam in the gloom, such pictures of light upon light 
are vacuous and expressionless, and neither to be enjoyed nor understood. 

“Tf this be the whole fruit of the victory, we say s t if the generations of mankind 
suffered and laid down their lives ; if prophets confessed and martyrs sang in the 
fire, and all the sacred tears were shed for no other end than that a race of creatures 
of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract in secula seculorum 
their contented and inoffensive (useless) lives,—why, at such a rate, better lose 
than win the battle ; or at all events better ring down the curtain before the last 
act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so 
singularly flat a winding up.” 

What is really meant by Survival of the Fittest is, an endless continuance of 
aspiration and (of its essential accompaniment) effort and struggle, An effort- 


236 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


less existence would be aspirationless ; and an aspirationless existence would be a 
living death. Hence of the eternal life as of the present, and of what are called 
Heaven and Hell hereafleras now, every enobled soul says with Fesus, ‘ My 
Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” —If I am, or shall be, in Heaven, I will 
work so long as even a single soul remains outside. If Lam, or shall be, in Hell, 
I will start improvements and never cease the struggle to reform both others and 
myself, This is Gospel as wellas Law: Religion ‘‘ pure and undefiled’’ as 
well as Evolutionary Science, 

In Carlylean phrase—‘ Hang your sensibilities, stop your snivelling complaints 
and your equally snivelling raptures! Leave off your general emotional tom- 
foolery, and get to WORK Like men,” 

The genuine Altruism of Science as well as of Religion, is beautifully por- 
trayed in a poem (representing a ‘‘ pure, white soul” at the gates of Heaven, 
refusing to enter while any are left in misery outside) of which the following are 
concluding stanzas : 


‘« «Should I be nearer Christ,’ she said, 
‘ By pitying less 
The sinful living, or woeful dead 
In their helplessness ?’ 
And the angels all were silent. 


‘* «Should I be liker Christ were I 
To love no more 
The loved, who in their anguish lie 
Outside the door ?’ 
And the angels all were silent. 


*** Did He not hang on the curséd tree, 
And bear its shame, 
And clasp to His heart, for love of me, 
My guilt and blame?’ 
And the angels all were silent. 


‘* * Should I be liker, nearer him, 
Forgetting this, 
Singing all day with the Seraphim, 
In selfish bliss ?’ 
And the angels all were silent. 


** The Lord Himself stood by the gate, 
And heard her speak 
Those tender words compassionate, 
Gentle and meek ; 
And the angels all were silent. 


RENASCENTD CHRISTIANITY. 237 


‘* Now, pity is the touch of God 
In human hearts ; 
’T was in that way Christ ever trod 
And ne’er departs : 
And the angels all were silent. 


*¢ And He said, ‘ Now I will go with you, 
Dear child of love, 
I am weary of all this glory, too, 
In heaven above’ ; 
And the angels all were silent. 


‘* * We will go seek and save the lost, 
If they will hear, 
They who are worst but need us most, 
And all are dear’ ; 
And the angels all were silent.” 


238 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


LXXI.—THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND ITS WORSHIP IN 
THE FIRST CENTURY. 


(From a recent issue of “Our Anglican Review,” contributed 
by the Archdeacon of London, and Chaplain in Ordinary of 
Her Mazesty the Queen.| 


“THE first glimpse that we get of primitive Christian wor- 
ship, apart from the meeting of the Feast of Love and the 
Lord’s Supper, is from the fourteenth chapter of the First 
Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians: 


“<Tf, therefore, the whole church be come together into 
one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in 
those that are unlearned or unbelievers, will they not say 
that ye are mad? But if all prophesy, and there come in 
one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of 
all, he is judged of all; and thus are the secrets of his heart 
made manifest; and so, falling down on his face, he will 
worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. 
How is it then, brethren? When ye come together every 
one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath 
a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let everything be done 
unto edifying. If any man speak in an unknown tongue, 
let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by course: 
and let one interpret. But if there be no interpreter, let 
him keep silence in the church; and let him speak to him- 
self and to God. Let the prophets speak two or three, and 
let the other (prophets) judge. If anything be revealed to 
another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace. For ye 
may all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all 
may be comforted. And the spirits of the prophets are sub- 
ject to the prophets—for God is not the author of confusion, 
but of peace, as in all the churches.’ 


“This vivid picture, the only one of its kind, gives us a 
clear and instructive view of the nature and workings of 
church life in those early times. The first thing that strikes 
us is the absence of all fixed order. No hint is given of the 
superintendence of an individual or class of persons regulat- 


RENASCENT- CHRISTIANIT Y. 239 


ing the services in the church assemblies, even where the 
mention of such would most naturally be made, as in the 
case of the disorders spoken of in the twenty-fifth and fol- 
lowing verses. The exercises seem to have gone on spon- 
taneously, very much as is now the case in many social 
gatherings where the meeting, as the saying is, is thrown 
open. Individuals employed their gifts under the prompt- 
ings of the Spirit, as seemed to them best, governed only by 
considerations of mutual regard and general utility. All 
enjoyed the right, yea, felt it a duty, to contribute some- 
thing toward the public edification according to the ability 
conferred on them generally. The idea that a special priest 
was necessary to mediate between the worshipping assembly 
and God is not for a moment entertained. Indeed, it 1s al- 
together ignored and excluded, on the supposition that all were 
now made priests unto God by the unction of the Spirit, and 
had an equal right to speak the truth that was in them, and 
to offer prayer. The disorders arising from the fullest con- 
cession of this right were not regarded as an evil so great as 
would have risen from the repression of the Spirit that 
wrought in all members severally as he would. The Spirit 
was not to be quenched ; prophesyings were not to be de- 
spised; and whatever there was of the carnal and selfish 
element mingling with what was spiritual and divine was to 
be separated and rejected by the critical faculty of the 
more discerning. The hearers were expected to prove all 
things, and hold fast that which is good. These facts should 
be commended to the attention of those who, in the exces- 
sive regard for having all things done decently and in order, 
proceed to the extreme of repressing the spontaneous life and 
activity of the Church as a whole, by putting the assembly 
solely and entirely under the control of a special order of indt- 
viduals.” 

How refreshing it is to gather an honest confession of 
Historic Facts, when we are constantly humiliated by such 
Ecclesiastical Fiction (made more offensive by the cheap 
and snobbish exclusiveness of those who assume to be of 
“The Apostolic Succession”) as the following, gathered 


240 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


from religious publications of recent date :—“ The Rev. 
(a well-known clergyman of New York) is quoted by the Zz- 
dependent as stating that ‘those who boast that they derive 
their office as ministers from the people should be made to 
know, if not to feel, that they are removed by an infinite 
chasm from those who derive their mysterious powers from 
above and are the vicegerents of heaven.’ And he adds: 
‘Dissenting ministers should be made to feel their in- 
feriority.’’ 


(a) Prayer in the Church down to the Middle of the Third 
Century. 


In Origen’s treatise “On Prayer” (De Oratione, cc. 25, 26. 
Opp. I.. pp. 222-224) is the following: 

“Tf we understand what prayer is, it will appear that it is 
never to be offered to any originated being, not to Christ 
himself, but only to the God and Father of all; to whom 
our Saviour himself prayed, and taught us to pray. For 
when his disciples asked him, Zeach us to pray, he did not 
teach them to pray to himself, but to the Father. 
Conformably to what he said, Why callest thou me good ? eee 
7s none good except one, God the Father, how could he say 
otherwise than, ‘Why dost thou pray to me? Prayer, as 
you learn from the Holy Scriptures, is to be offered to the 
Father only; ta;whom) ly myselfipray. 7c). ey Onenane 
read the words which were spoken by David to the Father 
concerning me: J wzll declare thy name to my brethren , in the 
midst of the assembly will I sing hymns to thee. It is not 
consistent with reason for those to pray to a brother, who 
are esteemed worthy of one Father with him. You, with 
me and through me, are to address your prayers to the 
Father alone.’ . . . Let us then, attending to what was 
said by Jesus, and all having the same mind, pray to God 
through him, without any division respecting the mode of 
prayer. But are we not divided, if some pray to the Father 
and some to the Son? Those who pray to the Son, whether 
they do or do not pray to the Father also, fall into a gross 


KENASCENT CHRISTIANITRY. 241 
a re nese eS en YT 


error, in their great simplicity, through want of judgment 
and examination.” 

In learning and talents, Origen, during his lifetime, had no 
rival among Christians. There was no other who possessed 
the same weight of character. The opinions which he ex- 
presses in the passages just quoted were, undoubtedly, the 
opinions of the intelligent Christians of his time. 

Origen, in other passages, implies that prayer in an infe- 
rior sense may be addressed to the logos or Christ. In his 
work against Celsus, he says, for instance: “ Every supplica- 
tion, prayer, request, and thanksgiving is to be addressed to 
Him who is God over all, through the High-Priest, superior 
to all angels, the living and divine logos. But we may also 
supplicate the logos himself, and make requests to him, 
and give thanks and pray, whenever we may be able to dis- 
tinguish between prayer properly speaking and prayer in a 
looser sense.” ‘What is here meant may appear from two 
other passages, in his work against Celsus, in which he says: 
“We first bring our prayers to the son of God, the first-born 
of the whole creation, the logos of God, and pray to him 
and request him, as a High-Priest, to offer up the prayers 
which reach him to the God over all, zo Ais God and our God.” 


LXXII.—CHRISTOLOGY IN THE CHURCH DOWN TO THE 
CLOSE OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 


PHILO, the great contemporary of Jesus, as a Jewish- 
Platonic philosopher in that chief city and centre of first- 
century learning, Alexandria, prepared the way for Paul, and 
the author of the Fourth Gospel, and the Christian Fathers, 
as truly as John the Baptizer and Reformer in the wilder- 
ness of Judea, prepared the way for the Christ and _ his 
chosen disciples. It is in the writings of Philo that we find 
first developed that doctrine of the Logos which is found 
in the Pauline Writings, characterizes the Fourth Gospel and 
finally is expanded into the Historic Creeds of the Church. 
No one then can rightly comprehend the Historic Creeds of 
the Church nor the Fourth Gospel without tracing them to 


242 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


their root-teachings as found in the elaborate philosophical 
writings of Philo. ‘According to him, considered as a 
person, the Logos is a god. Ina passage which has been 
closely imitated by Origen, he says: ‘Let us inquire if 
there are really two Gods.’ He answers: ‘The true God 
is one, but there are many who, in a less strict use of 
language, are called gods.’ The true God, he says, is de- 
noted by that name wth the article; others have it zwzthout 
the article; and thus his most venerable Logos is called 
god without the article. ‘No one,’ he says, ‘can compre- 
hend the nature of God; it is well if we can comprehend 
his zame, that is, the Logos, his interpreter ; he may be con- 
sidered, perhaps, as the god of imperfect beings, but the 
Most High is the God of the wise and perfect.’ He repre- 
sents the Logos as the instrument (Opyavov) of God in the 
creation of the universe ; as the image of God, by whom the 
universe was fashioned; as used by him, like a helm, in 
directing the course of all things; as he who himself sits at 
the helm and orders all things ; and as his first-born son, his 
vicegerent in the government of the world. ‘Those,’ says 
Philo, ‘who have true knowledge [knowledge of God] are 
rightly called sons of God. . . . Let him, then, who is 
not yet worthy to be called a son of God, strive to fashion 
himself to the resemblance of God’s first-born Logos, the 
most ancient angel, being, as it were,an archangel with many 
titles” . . . “Inthe beginning was the Logos, and the 
Logos was with Gop, and the Logos was god, i. e., divine ; 
he became man and dwelt among us.” 

This conception of Philo became the common faith, and 
teaching (we may say of Jesus himself) certainly of all the 
New Testament writers and of all the Christian Fathers 
down to the close of the third century. It is so elaborated 
in the writings of Justyn Martyr and of Irenaeus, but more 
fully and clearly by that greatest, most learned, and most 
saintly of the Fathers—Origen. 

“ Origen fully and consistently maintained the doctrine of 
a human soulin Jesus. Imbued with the principles of Pla- 
tonism, he believed this soul, 2% common with all other souls, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 243 


to have pre-existed, and in its pre-existent state to have, 
through its entire purity and moral perfection, become 
thoroughly filled and penetrated by the Logos, of whom all 
other souls partake in proportion to their love toward him. 
Thus the human soul of Jesus decame one with the Logos, 
and formed the bond of union between the body of Jesus 
and the divinity of the Logos; in consequence of which 
both the soul and body of the Saviour, being wholly mixed 
with and united to the Logos, partook of his divinity and 
were transformed into something divine. From the illustra- 
tions which Origen uses, respecting the connection between 
the Logos and the human nature of Christ, it is clear that 
he had no conception of that form of the doctrine which 
prevailed after his time. ‘We do not,’ he says, ‘ suppose 
the visible and sensible body of Jesus to have been God, 
nor yet his soul, of which he declared, My soul 1s sorrowful 
even unto death. But as he who says, the Lord am the God 
of all flesh, and There was no other God before me and there 
shall be none after me, is believed by the Jews to have been 
God using the soul and body of the prophet as an organ; and 
as, among the Gentiles, he who said, 


I know the number of the sands and the measure of the deep, 
And I understand the mute and hear him who speaks not, 


is understood to be a god, addressing men by the votce of 
the Pythoness ;—so we believe that the divine Logos, the 
son of the God of all, spoke through Jesus when he said, / 
am the way and the truth and the life; . . . Lam the 
living bread which has descended from heaven ; and when he 
uttered other similar declarations.’ ”’ 


‘His Geov pweraBeBnuevar.” . . . ‘* Origen, here, as often elsewhere, 
uses §€05 (god), not in our modern sense, as a rofer name, but as a common name. 
This use of the term, which was common to him with his contemporaries, and 
continued to be common after his time, is illustrated by his remarks upon the 
passage, ‘and the Logos was god’ in which he contends, that the Logos was 
‘god’ in an inferior sense ;—not, as we should say, God, but a god, or rather, 
not the Divine Being, but @ divine being; and in which he maintains that 
“beside the True God, many beings, by participation of God become divine.’’ 


244 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Literally ‘‘ decome gods” ;—as said the Psalmist approvingly quoted by Jesus 
and applied to himself. ‘‘ Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, 


I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God 
came (and the scripture cannot be broken), say ye of him, whom the Father 
sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest ; because I said, I am 
the son of God?” 


The learned Professor of Theology (Prof. Norton) from 
whom most of these citations are made adds, suggestively : 
“The full illustration of the use of the term god as a common 
name would, I think, throw much light upon the opinions 
both of the ancient Heathens and Christians.” 

The terms ‘ Messiah” among the Jewish Christians, 
“Christ? among the Gentile Christians, and ‘“ Logos” 
among the Platonizing Christians (or phzlosophizing Chris- 
tians) all had a common meaning; and, till the latter half 
of the third century, were generally received and interpreted 
as above set forth. But during the fourth century and there- 
after such ecclesiastics as Athanasius, Augustine, Cyril, Leo, 
and their successors, developed this simple teaching of the 
Bible and of the Apostolic Church into the old Pagan Mys- 
tery of a Triad. This doctrine of a Triad is one of the old- 
est and most persistent mystzcisms of the Pagan Religions. 
We find it broadly developed in the most ancient theology 
of the Bramins. Plato speculated upon it only to reject it. 
Philo used it as a figure of speech, or as a pictorial illustra- 
tion, for the temporary help of the uneducated and unrea- 
soning masses : he especially says—‘‘ God presents sometimes 
one and sometimes three images to the mental vision; oze, 
when the soul, thoroughly purified, rises above all idea of 
plurality to that unmingled form of being which admits of 
no mixture, alone, and wholly independent; three, before it 
is initiated zz the greater mystertes, and cannot contemplate 
H1M WHO Is by Himself alone, but needs the aid of some- 
thing beside,’—that is, the principal ‘‘ Powers of God are 
spoken of as distinct persons, only as a figurative mode of 
representing the operations of the Divine Being, accommo- 
dated to the weaknesses of those who cannot comprehend Him 
2551) Basse 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 245 


a a 


Such were the evident conceptions of all the Christian 
Fathers, likewise, down to and including Origen. But 
Athanasius, Augustine, and their successors insisted upon 
retaining the ancient mysticism and reincorporating it—not 
as a “figure of speech or as a pictorial illustration ”” accom- 
modated to the spiritual and intellectual weakness of the 
masses, but as a fundamental doctrine the acceptance and 
belief of which is, everywhere and forever, essential to 
salvation ! 

Did not Esaias and Jesus have in mind also this very de- 
generation of “ Pure religion and undefiled before God and 
the Father” when they exclaimed—‘“ But in vain they do 
worship me, teaching for doctrines the specudations of men i 

Originally the Hindoo Philosophers, Plato,the Jewish Cabal- 
ists, Philo, the Apostles, and the Christian Fathers all used 
the “Triad” as a symbol of the three mazn attributes of the 
One Supreme. They had no idea of them as personalities, ex- 
cept as figures of speech. As one may say “ Reason governs 
me, Hope cheers me, and Duty directs me ” without resolv- 
ing himself into an actual “Triad” composed of three per- 
sons ; so exactly the original and only intelligible meaning 
of all the Divine “Triads” was that of attributes. When 
these attributes were believed to be actual Persons and as 
such were hardened into an essential dogma, then intellectual 
as wellas spiritual degeneration began and rapidly prevailed. 

“From the shapeless, discordant, unintelligible specula- 
tions of the fourth century, the doctrine of Tri-personality 
of God drew its origin. These speculations it is now diff- 
cult to present under such an aspect as may enable a modern 
reader to apprehed their character. But the doctrine to 
which they gave birth still subsists, as the professed faith of 
the greater part of the Christian world. And when we look 
back through the long ages of its reign, and consider all its 
relations, and all its direct and indirect effects, we shall per- 
ceive that few doctrines have produced more unmixed evil. 
For any benefits resulting from its belief, it would be in vain 
to look, except benefits of that kind which the providence 
of God educes from the follies and errors of man.” 


246 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


eee 


LXXIII.—DEGENERATION IN THE CHURCH: HOW IT PRO- 
CEEDED, AND PROCEEDS. 


THE Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, which settled the doc- 
trine of the “ Hypostatic Union,” the “Motherhood of 
God,” etc., and anathematized as a “second Judas” every 
one who should presume to object, was presided over by 
Cyril (whom the traditional Church calls St. Cyril) a “ turbu- 
lent, ambitious, unprincipled man ”—as were nearly all the 
great champions of Orthodox Dogmatism from the begin- 
ning of the fourth century downward. “Cyril prevailed in his 
factitious contest, through his influence with the officers of 
the imperial household, and the bribes which he lavished 
upon them ; for, what was Orthodoxy was to be determined 
in the last resort by the Emperor Theodosius, or rather by 
the women and eunuchs of his court. ‘Thanks to the purse 
of St. Cyril’ says Le Clerc, ‘the Romish Church which 
regards Councils as infallible, is not Nestorian.” Not only 
the Romish Church but the traditionally Protestant as well is 
indebted for its “ orthodoxy,” in a very large degree, to the 
“purse of St. Cyril” and to his “turbulent, ambitious, unprin- 
cipled” leadership. The same in general is historic truth of 
Dioscurus who triumphed at the succeeding Council of Ephe- 
sus (fittingly called “a Council of Banditti ”’): of Leo who, 
by the Emperor’s authority, prevailed at the Council of Chal- 
cedon over the “ Monophysite Heretics” in favor of the 
“‘two natures in one person ’’—the “ road to paradise,” the 
“bridge as sharp as a razor suspended over the Abyss,’ — 
and of many other dogma-mongers and vote-purchasers or 
vote-compellers of preceding as well as of succeeding ‘in- 
fallible Councils” of the degenerate Church. 

“The simple and sad truth is, that as soon as Christianity 
was generally diffused, it began to absorb corruptions from 
all the countries that it covered, and to reflect the complex- 
ion of all the religious and philosophic systems to which it 
was opposed.” 

“The East and West were infusing their several elements 
of poison into the pure cup of Gospel truth. In Asia Minor, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 247 


cre renee en 


as at Alexandria, Hellenic philosophism did not refuse to 
blend with Oriental theosophy; the Jewish superstitions of 
the Cabbala, and the wild speculations of the Persian Magi, 
were combined with Greek craving for an enlightened and 
esoteric religion. The outward forms of superstition were 
ready for the vulgar multitude.” 

So began the degeneration of Christianity, and so has it 
proceeded through all the centuries till now. 

Even as late as in the fourteenth century, violent disputes 
arose and raged with rancorous contention over the question, 
whether the light which surrounded Jesus at the transfigura- 
tion was created or uncreated. Four councils of the Church 
were assembled and, after endless discussions, it was decided 
that the light was wncreated; and all who denied it were 
anathematized as “ worse than all other heretics.” 

It is hardly two centuries since it was the common opin- 
ion, if not formal decree of the Church that the denial of 
witchcraft was the denial of God himself. “ They that doubt 
of witches do not only deny them, but spirits ; and are ob- 
liquely and of consequence a sort, not of Infidels, but 
Atheists.” 

And, coming down to the nineteenth century, the “ ortho- 
dox” councils, decrees, and opinions of to-day adhere to 
Mysticism, Speculation, and Traditional Dogma,—identify- 
ing them with Christianity and with the Christ so completely 
as to result in the popular verdict, that, all who do not so 
identify and adhere are heretics, infidels, and practical (if not 
theoretical) atheists. 


ae 


What are now accepted as commonplace truths concern- 
ing the Bible were stated, with profound and incontrovert- 
ible evidences, two hundred years ago by Richard Simon, 
the great Oriental scholar, and restated a hundred years ago 
by Dr. Joseph Priestly (the distinguished leader in England 
and America of modern Unitarianism) in his “ History of the 
Corruptions of Christianity.” Both of these scholarly and 
saintly men were overwhelmed with denunciations, and their 


248 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


prophetic voices were silenced by the “orthodox” outcry. 
Now, the children of those who slew these prophets are 
building their monuments, and meanwhile are themselves 
slaying the prophets of to-day. 


Of this, as of every past generation, it is true that lives 
are seen and valued only in retrospect. The “Heresy” of 
one generation is the “ Orthodoxy” of succeeding ones. 
The zealous conformist or the stout faith-defender of one 
age is written in History as a persecuting bigot or a stoner 
of the prophets, while the se/fsacrificing non-conformist or 
the conscientious “heretic” is enrolled as sage or saint. So 
in every period of human evolution is fulfilled the prediction 
of Jesus—Many that are first shall be last, and many that 
are last shall be first ! 


There is a form of degeneration, probably more widely 
prevailing at the present time than even in the earlier centu- 
ries (because light and knowledge, and the consequent temp- 
tations to it are largely increased),—that of more or less 
strictly conforming to the ritual or letter of Traditionalism 
while deliberately violating its spirit. The “ orthodoxy ” 
outgrown and inwardly rejected, but, outwardly maintained 
for the sake of some form of personal advantage—peace or 
policy | 

As the degenerate Greeks maintained the traditional “ but 
one meal a day ” (as a Sacrament of Obligation) by feasting 
the whole day long; as the degenerate Jews maintained the 
tradition of ‘a Sabbath Day’s Journey,” by halting at the 
prescribed limit and cad/ing it their residence, then proceed- 
ing from stage to stage at their pleasure; so the degenerate 
conformist for the sake of peace or of policy ever does, and 
now seemingly even more widely than in former times. 
This is the most degenerating of all forms of Hypocracy, 
because it is most irreverent to Conscience and disloyal to 
Truth. Cyril and the jong line of like-spirited ecclesiastical 
politicians who preceded and succeeded him were, at least, 
sincere ; hence “ the times of that ignorance God winked at, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 249 


but now !”—Now, recurring centuries and wide intellectual 
progress have brought /zgft¢ so clear and ever-increasing that 
the Cyrils of to-day cannot be excused, the ecclesiastical 
politicians of to-day must be, from selfish motives, zzszucere. 
All insincerity springs from selfish motives: and of all Hypo- 
crites the insincere Religious Conformist is most noxious 
and least forgivable. To such it was that Jesus (quoting all 
the greatest prophets) said,—repeating it again and again, 
with prophetic woes added like “ burning coals of fire”’ 


“Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, 
This people honoureth me with their lips ; 
But their heart is far from me.” 


The following, as “signs of the times,’ may here be fit- 
tingy inserted : 


‘In a record of notable persons who have united with the Roman Catholic 
communion within the past three months, as converts from other denomina- 
tions, the Paulist Fathers mention” (several names of well-known soczety people 
are here given) . . . ‘‘ They quote Cardinal as authority for the 
statement that there are received into the Church every year in this country 
30,000 converts.” —(Hrom a leading New York Daily Newspaper of this date, 
— Fune 7, 1897.) 


‘*The Christian Advocate says of Rev. , an English clergyman who 
has become a Romanist, that ‘ he is the most noted of the large number of Prot- 
estant Episcopal and Church of England clergymen who have Romanized. 
But there will be more to follow unless some antidote can be found to the 
Romanizing germs under culture in that body.’ ” 


—And in every other traditionary “ body” as well! 
Inadequately verified Traditions accepted as Facts, in- 
sisted upon as History and imposed as essential Creeds— 
these are the ‘‘ Romanizing germs under culture,” the ever- 
erowing fung?, the noxious Jaczllarieé of Degeneration in all 
Religions and in every Sect. ‘ Romanizing”’ is but Prot- 
estantizing carried a step backward. Protestantizing is 
Fourth-centuryizing. Fourth-centuryizing is a combination 
of Judaizing and of Paganizing which is, again, Romanizing. 
So the circle is complete.—“‘ AW/ are but parts of one stupen- 
dous whole,” which is Traditionalism, which is Reversion, 
which is Degeneration, which is zutellectual and spiritual 


250 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


Decay. The only kind of “izing” that leads forward and 
upward is that of simple Truth based upon such facts of 
History and of Experience as are verifiable by the processes 
of Reason and the methods of Science. 

This is Christtantzing—“ Why even of yourselves judge 
ye not what is right P—Ye have made the commandment of 
God of none effect by your traditions.” All who thus 
Christianize, though called “heretics” or ‘‘ heathen,” are 
Christians. All others travel in the endless circle above 
described. 

The ‘tendency to revert” in Religion even more than 
elsewhere is always strong and persistent. It is encouraging 
however to note “signs of the times” in the opposite direc- 
tion, such as the following, also of recent date: 


‘Several progressive clergymen of nominally Orthodox Churches and of 
various denominations, in Boston and vicinity, have decided to demonstrate 
their cordial fellowship of Unitarians by an exchange of pulpits. Some even 
of the Episcopal clergymen also speak and act in hearty sympathy with Uni- 
tarians, as always did their great Bishop, Phillips Brooks.” 

‘* Jew and Gentile worshipped under the same roof Sunday at the Belden 
Avenue Baptist Church. Rabbi of the Emmanuel Jewish Church and the 
Rev. , pastor of the church in which the union service was held, preached 
from the same pulpit, while Christians and Jews touched elbows in the pews.” 

‘* Rabbi confirmed eleven young Jews, after which Rey. 
and his Jewish brother each said encouraging things about each other’s 
religion. After Rabbi pronounced the benediction both congregations 
passed out well pleased with the novel experience.”’ 


And more encouraging still: 


‘* Swami Virikananda, the learned Brahmin of India, during his two year’s 
mission in this country, has been respectfully welcomed and listened to by 
audiences in every large city, composed of our most refined and cultivated 
people.” 

Surely ‘The morning light is breaking” and the Kingdom 
of God is beginning to come! 


LXXIV.—DEGENERATION OF THE APOSTOLIC MINISTRY 
INTO COMMERCIALISM—AS FOUND AT THE 
CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 


‘For the time will come when they wll not endure sound 
teaching, but will procure for themselves teachers after their 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 251 


own fancy ; because they will have itching ears; so they will 
turn away thetr ears from the truth, and turn aside to fables.” 


THE following extracts from a long and well-sustained 
letter in a recent New York Daily Newspaper will sufficiently 
explain the heading given to this Section: 

(Additional explanations may be found in preceding Sections headed 
‘** Mercenary Conformity ” and ‘‘ Hireling Priests.”’) 

“The fact is, confirmed by abundant testimony and by 
the reluctant admissions of men who are interested to main- 
tain the contrary, there never was a time when a bright, 
clean, self-respecting, talented, and absolutely fearless young 
man undertook a greater personal risk in committing himself 
to the restless sea of ministerial supply and demand. It 
would require a book in place of a newspaper column to 
demonstrate this fact; but if ever a fact is more easily de- 
monstrable the writer will hail it with acclamation. 

‘The initial note in the discussion of the problem is aie 
significant. I refer to the all-pervasive restlessness and dis- 
content, the ill-concealed disgust with present churchly con- 
ditions, the deep underlying anxiety for prospective bread 
and butter, the ominous foreboding for the future which one 
finds reflected in the private confidences of so many min- 
isters now holding pastorates. A prominent officer of a 
missionary society is reported to have said that in all his vis- 
itations among the clergy of a certain state, he had failed 
to discover a single incumbent who did not wish to make a 
change. I have in my possession a letter from a successful 
and honored pastor in New England, for fifteen years in one 
parish, but now desirous of change for weighty reasons, and 
who writes me: ‘It makes one sick of the whole business to 
see the scramble for place.’ Not long ago an able and useful 
clergyman, whose sermons are in print in a notable publi- 
cation, finding it desirable to resign his pastorate, deliber- 
ately turned his attention to the study of law rather than 
enter upon a fierce, degrading, heart-breaking competition 
for another pulpit. . . . Of such testimony the writer 
could furnish a dismal sufficiency. . . . Accertain Con- 


252 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


sregational church in Connecticut, with by no means an 
inviting future, received not less than 250 applications, 
scattered all the way from Maine to California. And such 


ratio is more than a thrice-told tale. . . . Indeed, the 
commercial basis of modern church life is one of the most dis- 
couraging tendencies of our time. . . . Somuch the worse 


for a system that encourages the cultivation of a spirit quite 
the reverse of the spirit inculcated in the Pauline maxim, 
that the good soldier of Christ ‘must endure hardness.’ 
Moreover, who will vouch for a state inthe Union where the 
hue and cry after vacant pulpits is not formidably resonant? 
Who will name a pastorless church, East or West, that is not 
besieged? . . . Theremorseless competition for places ; 
the wire-pulling and pipe-laying merely to get a hearing in a 
vacant pulpit ; the chance of being set aside in the full vigor 
of maturity; the alarming growth of short-term pastorates ; 
the fact that men of decided ability sometimes wait years 
for employment; the reluctant conviction that influence and 
a ‘pull’ will do for a maninthe ministry precisely what such 
factors will accomplish in politics—all these considerations 
are powerful makeweights in turning the attention of high- 
minded young men to other pursuits. Is it any wonder that 
out of a class of 275 at Yale—the educational stronghold of 
New England Congregationalism—only five study theol- 


ogy? 


(The graduating class of Harvard University for 1897 numbers 388. The 
Class Secretary, in response to the usual circular, has received replies as to pro- 
posed vocations from nearly 300, ‘‘ not one of whom proposes Theology or the 
Christian Ministry.’’) 


“The baneful conditions which underlie much of our mod- 
ern church life already begin to tell as deterrent forces. 
The writer would be grateful indeed if a more optimistic 
view of the ministry could be vindicated. But something 
more than sentiment and religious tradition will be required 
to dispose of the cold and repellant facts already adduced. 
When conditions improve—if they ever do—one 
may return to the traditional view of the clerical profession. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 253 


The responsibility of the church for the existing condition 


of affairs must be reserved for another article. 
‘“* CLERGYMAN, 
“New Haven, April, 13, 1897.” 


6 


Asa specimen of what every day may be read in ‘‘ religious” as well as in 
secular papers the following (of the date of this writing) may be given: ‘* The 
Rev. has received a $5000 call to ——. Going to look over the field, he 
found a very elegant church in the most fashionable part of the city, and the 
congregation composed of the most fashionable portion of the population. It 
was all very fine and tempting . . .” ad nauseam, Of course *‘ the call has 
been accepted,” and congratulations to the ‘‘ young pastor” are eagerly and 
widely offered. Such is the almost universal commercialism of the age,—in the 
‘*Church” as elsewhere. The first question is, How much salary ? the second, 
How fine or fashionable? and the degrees of talent or of success, as well as 
of congratulations expected, are proportionate. 


66 


The author does not recall nor, after much inquiry, has he 
learned of but a very few instances in which a “call” at a 
larger salary or wider fame has been declined, or a rich and 
fashionable Church voluntarily relinquished for a poor and 
humble one. Not only most important Missions needing 
highest talent as well as greatest self-sacrifice, but most impor- 
tant official stations also—such as that of a General Secre- 
tary, a Presiding Officer, or even a Bishop—rarely are able to 
secure an ‘acceptance ” from clergymen whose salaries are 
larger than those proffered—unless superior honors or other 
perquisites are connected with the station. Thus is the 
“constraining love of Christ” held in abeyance. Thus do 
the rzch have the Gospel preached to them. 


“But do thou, O man of God, flee these things; and seek 
rather for righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, 
meekness; fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on ever- 
lasting life.” 


In their ignorance and fear men built altars. Religion became a trade. 
Sacerdotalism managed and monopolized the market. The priests (and their 
proclaimed deities) consumed the abundant Sacrifices and dwelt in the costly 
temples ‘‘ arrayed in purple and fine linen,” while the people who brought the 
sacrifices and built the temples starved. Such was the meaning of the Parable 
of Dives and Lazarus. 


‘* Even the great revelation of Jesus left his followers so bound by traditions 
that they could not escape from priestly shackles, and wove into the new faith 


254 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


a mass of ceremonial observances as fruitless, wearisome, and unspiritual as 
those of the Talmud. Not even the Pentecostal fires could transmute the baser 
metal into the pure gold, and it remained for the Christian religion to gradually 
develop a sacerdotal system more complex and tyrannical than any known to 
the ancient world.” 


‘““DOES NOT CARE TO SURRENDER THE LIBERTY OF 
SPEECH.” 


This, as a heading in the Daily Newspapers of this date, is so suggestive of 
nobility and courage—especially on the part of a clergyman—that it is deserving 
of permanent notice. The young, scholarly, and widely distinguished President 
of one of the oldest Universities of New England, who is also a Professor and 
a Pastor, resigns all these positions with their honors and emoluments rather 
than “surrender the liberty of speech” which his conservative trustees and 
other constituents demanded. Surely the heroic love of Truth and the spirit 
of self-surrender for Convictions’ sake, which together constituted the crowning 
glory of Apostolic Christianity, are not yet entirely perished from the earth. 
An appropriate exhortation to many who, as yet, have not developed the cour- 
age of their convictions is, ‘‘ Go thou and do likewise.” 


[See remarks by the Bishop of New York on one of the opening pages. | 


A HOPEFUL INCIDENT. 


‘DECLINED THE PROFFERED DEGREE OF D.D. 


“By telegraph to the Herald.] 

‘“TORONTO, Ont., Fune 30, 1897.—The Rev. of this city has de- 
clined unreservedly to accept the degree of Doctor of Divinity.” . . . So 
rare an instance of modesty deserves a permanent as well as a telegraphic 
record. The degree of ‘‘ D.D.” has come to signify nothing at all as to essential 
scholarship or worth ; and yet it is amusing, as well as sad, to observe how it is 
sought for and paraded. They love ‘‘ to be called of men Doctor, Doctor !” 


LXXV.—SERMONS MADE TO ORDER. 


(From the Boston Evening Transcript, ¥uly 17, 1897.) 


‘Seldom has there been a more glaring instance of a departure from the 
ethical standard of the pulpit than in a circular which comes from New York, 
offering to furnish clergymen with special typewritten sermons, prepared by ‘a 
clergyman recently connected with a large church,’ prices to be dependent 
upon the nature and extent of the work required. That the authors of the 
circular recognize this fact themselves is apparent in their excuse that these 
sermons are for ministers ‘who, in the sharp competition of modern times and 
the multiplicity of other duties, are not able to prepare for themselves the high 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 255 


quality of work demanded in the pulpit.’ The pitiful fact about the matter, 
however, is that there must be some demand for work of this sort, or there 
would be no one with the temerity to insult a clergyman by offering him a 
typewritten sermon to be passed off on his congregation as his own. Plagiar- 
ism in the pulpit is not unknown, and it may be remembered that a cultivated 
Englishman who visited Boston some years ago stooped to such work ; but as 
a business, to be advertised by circular, this sermon-manufacturing is something 
new. The ‘Outlook’ has received one of these circulars, and commenting upon 
it at length, says: 

‘** We know of no way of making such a business impossible except by the 
cultivation of a higher ethical sentiment among clergymen themselves.’ A 
wolf in sheep’s clothing, indeed, is the man who talks to his people about 
honesty and sincerity and then reads to them as his own a sermon which he 
has never prepared.” 


But it is an open secret that this is widely done. The 
manuscript sermon trade is an old one in European countries 
and, especially in the Churches of England, is seemingly ac- 
cepted as legitimate. In the American Churches, too, of the 
more fashionable order, one rarely can hear a sermon with 
any first-handed life or point in it; so that whether it is or 
is not original isa matter of entire indifference. The less of 
zt the better anyway ; and if it is smooth, and short, and melo- 
diously delivered no questions will be asked. Even when a 
fashionable “ orthodox” Church on the Avenue is diverted 
with an Easter-day Sermonette, made up of fragments of 
an eloquent sermon from a volume of “heretical” sermons, 
and the imposition is publicly exposed, hardly a ripple of 
excitement and no condemnation at all is awakened thereby! 
In this condition of the “ ethical sentiment ” it is as well to 
use “typewritten sermons made to order’ as to use those 
in manuscript imported from England or those in print 
stolen from books. 

The sermon, anyway, among the fashionable Protestant 
sects is rapidly becoming what it has long been in the 
Roman Catholic sect—a matter of little or of no account. 
“ How did you like the sermon?” asked one of another as 
they left the church. “Ido not care for sermons anyway, 
and as that came as near to nothing as possible I liked it 
well,” was the reply. To fill out the program and give a 
breathing-spell to the singers and reciters seems growingly 


256 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


to be the main function of the sermon. The performance 
of a Ritual, or the short and quick discharge of a still repu- 
table, but very distasteful, duty of “ going to church” being 
a chief object of what is called Worship—quite naturally the 
increasing demand must be for short and quick sermons and 
‘as near to nothing as possible.” The time “as come when 
“itching ears” in the Churches “no longer endure sound 
instruction,’ nor zuzstruction of any sort. The ‘“tithings of 
mint, anise, and cummin’’—the jproprieties of ceremonies, 
forms, recitings, and other externalities—have widely taken 
the place of the “weightier matters of the Law.” So that 
it is now old-fashioned and extremely unpopular to “ preach 
the Gospel to every creature.” Any modern Paul who 
should venture to “reason of righteousness, temperance, and 
a judgment to come” so pointedly as to make his avrzsto- 
cratic hearers ‘“‘ tremble” would quickly be remanded to the 
madhouse (especially should he “continue his speech till 
midnight ’’) with words similar to those used of both Paul 
and his divine Master, “‘he is beside himself’ ;—or, should 
he press home his Gospel so as to make it personal to his 
whole congregation, something would certainly transpire 
similar to that recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel, 4th chapter, 
28th and 29th verses: ‘‘ And all they in the synagogue, when 
they heard these things, were filled with wrath ; and rose up 
and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of 
the hill whereon their city was built; that they might cast 
him down headlong.” 

In this condition of the “ ethical sentiment ”’ it is well, for 
all who are not possessed of the martyr-spirit of genuine Chris- 
tianity, to preach sermons that are ‘short and quick” and 
“as near to nothing as possible ”—whether original, or pur- 
chased, or stolen. 


What genuine Christianity is should be gathered from the brave, and bold, 
and self-forgetting voices and lives of the ‘‘ noble army of martyrs ”’ in connection 
with such fundamentally essential New Testament requirements as follows: 
‘“Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of and be baptized with the 
baptism that Iam baptized with. . . . The servant is not above his lord, nor the 
disciple above his teacher ; if they have called the ruler of the house Beelze- 
bub, how much more will they so call them who are of his household. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 257 
i ae hea ES ene a ie 


If any man” (and especially any minister) ‘‘ will be my disciple let him 
deny himself, take his cross every day and follow me . . . think not 
that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace but a sword 
behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves 

if they have persecuted me they will also persecute you . . . woe unto you 
when all men shall speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false 
prophets—blessed are ye when man shall revile you, and persecute you, and say 
all manner of evil against you falsely—for so persecuted they the (¢vze) prophets 
which were before you ”—all of which, as fundamental self-surrender and self- 
crucifixion, was accepted and experienced by every ¢rue minister of the Gospel 
and by every genuine Christian from the days of Peter and Paul to the days of 
Luther, Wesley, Channing, Robertson, Stanley and Phillips Brooks. 


LXXVI.—TRADITIONALISM AS A MAIN CAUSE OF DEGEN- 
ERATION. 


IN the traditional Christian Church exactly the same thing 
has come to pass that existed in the Jewish Church at the 
beginning of the Christian era,—“ making the Word of God 
of none effect through your tradition, which ye have de- 
livered—teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” 
The degenerate Jewish Church had come to esteem tra- 
ditions concerning the Law as equal to, and even above, the 
Law itself. The Pharisees insisted that the written could 
only be understood through the oral, that the Church 
through its Sanhedrim, and the Sanhedrim through its Suc- 
cession of Priests, had received the True Faith from Moses 
according to which the Law must be interpreted by all. 
“It was the fundamental principle of the Pharisees that by 
the side of the written law there was an oral law (tradition) to 
complete and to explain the written law. It was an article 
of faith that in the Pentateuch there was no precept, and no 
regulation, ceremonial, doctrinal, or legal, of which God had 
not given to Moses all explanations necessary for their appli- 
cation, with the order to transmit by word of mouth. The 
classical passage on this subject is the following: ‘Moses 
received the Traditions from Sinai, and delivered them to 
Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the 
priests, and the priests to the men of the Great Synagogue.’” 
In the end the Traditions became more sacred than the 


258 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


Law, and practically superseded it. The Law was only 
read or heard in detached passages or “texts” just to furnish 
a starting point for the endless Traditions. 

So now—endless Expositions, Commentaries or Sermons 
have taken the place of the Bible and practically superseded 
it. It is read or heard only as a “ text,” or as a starter for 
elaborate traditional interpretations. No longer is it “ Hear 
what the Spirit saith to the Churches,’ but Hear what THE 
CHURCH says, or what POPES have commanded, or what 
SANHEDRIMS from the fourth century downward have de- 
creed! The Mishna and the Zargums—the Creeds and the 
Doctrines with their offictally authorized elaborations are 
both the Law and the Gospel of “ Orthodoxy ” now, as they 
were of “ Pharisaism” at the opening of the Christian Era. 
“ Howbeit, they did not hearken, but they did after their 
former manner. So these nations feared the LORD, and 
served their graven tmages, both their children, and their 
children’s children; as did their fathers, so do they unto thes 
day.” (See 2 Kings, chapter 17). 

A sermon just published, as preached in one of the largest 
and most fashionable Roman Catholic Churches of New York 
to “a crowded congregation, many people being turned 
away from the High Mass,’ begins as follows. “ At the 
outset God placed at the entrance of His temple an incom- 
prehensible mystery. Those who will enter there must 
accept this mystery blindly. If they will accept this mys- 
tery on the strength of His Word, then there will never be 
a single difficulty in their belief. . . . My lips are closed 
by the commands of St. Paul. I can imagine his scowling 
countenance if I were about to explain this mystery to you.” 
Just so! Let your eyes be put out, your brain stupefied 
and your reason stultified—then there will be no further 
trouble; after that there will never be a single difficulty in 
your belief. 


“ Open your mouth and shut your eyes, 
And I'll give you something to make you wise ’’— 


though an old rhyme is, after all, the summarized method 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 259 


of charlatanry in Religion as everywhere else. ‘‘ Whether it 
be a proposition or a pill, sewallowing and not questioning ”’ is 
what the charlatan demands. Both the fat livelihood and 
the self-parading glory of the Charlatan Priest depend upon 
“unquestioning faith” in his fundamental proposition. 
That proposition accepted “blindly,” all the rest follows—of 
course! 

Grant the premise and all the conclusions must follow: 
there is no escaping them. Antichrist, in all its forms the 
world over, begins ever with an “incomprehensible mystery ” 
which it forges into a fundamental or szze gua non dogma: 
this dogma once accepted becomes a yoke —then follow whips 
of Logic and goads of Consistency, compelling all the rest. 
This is the method of priestcraft in all the Religions and in 
all the sectarian forms of each religion. Sharp as a serpent 
(but zot as “harmless as a dove’’) each sectarian, church- 
man, champion-of-the-faith, or whatever else he may be 
called, invariably says, as his first word: “I can do nothing 
with you until you accept on faith” (that is d/znzdly) “ my 
fundamental proposition.” This accepted and the yoke of 
the sect, church, faith, whatever it may be, inevitably fol- 
lows. Thereafter it will be “hard to kick against the pricks,” 
—as the Voice said to Saul, who was inwardly and secretly 
rebelling against the whips and goads of Pharisaism, whose 
hard and heavy yoke of Dogmatic Consistency he had, 
from youth up, been compelled to bear. 

Still sounds, as earnestly and as pitifully as ever, the 
voice of Jesus—the same that spoke to Saul on the way to 
Damascus-—“ Come unto me all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me, for J am meek and lowly in heart; and 
ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke ts easy and 
my burden ts light.” 

A. timely illustration of the reliableness of Tradition is 
before us at this date. The ‘ Diamond Anniversary” of 
Queen Victoria has called forth such endless spurzous reports 
of her sayings and doings—told and retold, prznted and re- 
printed as evidences of her supreme goodness, wisdom, 


260 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


greatness, and glory—that “she no longer attempts to refute 
or deny them,” considering it to be a hopeless task. 

“If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be 
done in the dry ?”’ In these omniscient days of the Print- 
ing Press and of Argus-eyed Historic Records and Criticisms, 
spurious Traditions are even more widely received and be- 
lieved than are verifiable Facts. What then must have been 
the case increasingly as we go backward through the centuries! 
What is azy Tradition worth unless it be Azstortcally verified 
—especially any Tradition of such imaginative and credulous 
ages as were those which produced and “handed down” 
the Mishna and Targums, the Apocryphas and Hagiographas, 
the zzfallible creeds and essential doctrines of “orthodox” 
Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedism, Buddhism, and all 
the other forms of traditional religious faith. ‘“‘ And even now 
is the axe laid unto the root of the trees: every tree there- 
fore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and 
cast into the fire. . . Whose fan is in his hand, and he 
will thoroughly cleanse his threshing-floor; and he will 
gather his wheat into the garner, but the chaff he will burn 
up with unquenchable fire.” 


LXXVII.—CREDULITY AND ROME, OR FAITH AND 
REASON—WHICH ? 


For sixteen centuries the doctrine of the “Triad” in its 
Christianized form has been sustained, chiefly from the word 
Elohim in the Old Testament and from the passage known 
as that of The Three Witnesses in the New Testament. 
This last was long called, by some of its chief supporters, 
the “‘ main peg upon which the doctrine hung” or the “ cor- 
ner-stone upon which it was built.” Since the Revised 
Version has joined with all honest or honorable Biblical 
Scholarship to reject this New Testament passage as spu- 
rious, the still persistent defenders of the doctrine have 
fallen back upon the name Elohim—a name now clearly 
proved to be aa relic of polytheism which was permitted to 
survive for a time in the oldest of the Old Testament 
writings. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 261 

gga Ral al a oa SL a a ie 

“In Amos K. Fiske’s work, entitled ‘The Myths of Israel,’ 

the Elohist portion of the text of Genesis is distinguished 

from the Jahoist by being printed in different type, while 

in the Polychrome Bible the composite authorship is indi- 
cated by the four or five separate colors. 

“ Referring to the Elohist text, the Rev. A. H. Sayce, the 
greatest living authority on the Babylonian cuneiform in- 
scriptions, in ‘The Higher Criticism and the Verdict of the 
Monuments,’ writes as follows: 

““The word Elohim takes us back again to the pre-Israel- 
itish age of Canaan. Elohim is a plural noun, and _ its 
employment in the Old Testament as a singular has given 
rise to a large amount of learned discussion, and, it must 
also be added, of a learned want of common sense. ; 
If the Hebrew word Elohim had not once signified the plural 
“gods,” it would never have been given a plural form, and 
the best proof of this is the fact that in several passages of 
the Old Testament the word is still used in a plural sense. 
Indeed, there are one or two passages, as, for example, Gen. 
i., 26, where the word, although referring to the God of 
Israel, is yet employed with a plural verb, much to the be- 
wilderment of the Jewish rabbis and the Christian commen- 
tators who followed them. It is strange how preconceived 
theories will cause the best scholars to close their eyes to 
obvious facts. . . . What can be plainer than the exist- 
ence of a persistent polytheism among the bulk of the 
people, and the inevitable traces of this polytheism that 
were left upon the language and possibly the thoughts of 
the enlighted few?’ 

“The tablets of Tel el-Amarna (1887) show very clearly 
how it was possible that a word which formerly signified 
‘gods’ could come to signify the one Supreme Deity.” 

There would now seem to be left no infallible authority 
for this doctrine of the “ Triad in its Christianized form” 
other than that of infallible Councils. But infallible Coun- 
cils essentially imply an infallible Church; and an infallible 
Church essentially implies an infallible head of the Church, 
which is Papacy. So that, so far as this particular doctrine 


262 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


is concerned, it is now and henceforth “ Rome or Reason’ 
—there is no other alternative. 

Accept “ Rome” and this matter, like all others pertain- 
ing to fact as well as to faith, is already closed and settled. 
You are forbidden to ask questions, you must not think; 
all that you may say is, “I believe.” 

“The Holy Office and Supreme Infallibility of the Vati- 
can” has just now promulgated an Edict forbidding abso- 
lutely any further investigation of the question as to whether 
the “text of the three heavenly witnesses” is authentic or 
an interpolation. Whether it is an integral part of the 
original Epistle or not, taught in the Bible or not, z¢ zs ax 
integral part of the teachings of the Infallible Church—and 
that ends the matter. For the future no Roman Catholic 
must call it into question, or investigate it except as an 
Infallible Truth. This is logical and inevitable—from the 
standpoint of an Infallible Church, as also from the stand- 
point of Infallible Councils, or of Infallible Creeds, or of 
Infallible Tradition or of essential and binding “ Orthodoxy ” 
of any sort. All these roads lead to Rome. Whoever 
resolutely walks in either of them should “leave all hope 
behind”; and the quicker “e reaches Rome the better. 
Accept any claim of Inerrancy, whether it be creed, or book, 
or Pope and you are already within the territory of the Vatt- 
can. And from it there is no ultimate escape or consistent 
appeal except to Reason. At last the time has come, and 
the twentieth century will fully reveal it, when, for all onest 
people there can be but two Churches—the Church of Rome 
and the Church of Reason; or rather, the Church of Credu- 
lity dictated and compelled by Rome and the Church of Fazth 
directed and constrained by Reason. Which of these will be 
chosen by all the zztelligently honest is not a matter of doubt. 
For that intelligence which 7s noble enough to be honest will 
never submit to the suppression of investigations with refer- 
ence to any question beneath the sun. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 263 


LXXVIII.—EVOLUTION OF THE TRIAD AS AN EXPLANATION 
OF GOD. 


The conception of God as a Triad probably originated 
from its analogy to the human family—father, mother, and 
child (or children). We trace this in the most ancient Hin- 
doo teachings, and the symbol was constantly in use by 
Plato, Philo, the Cabalists, and the Gnostics. The human 
family is three in one, hence the divine family or the “ God- 
head” must be, or probably is, three in one. So they 
reasoned, and fourth-century theologians accepted their 
reasoning. 

Elaborating this analogy the Triad came to be the com- 
mon explanation of almost everything. Among the Chal- 
dean and all later Astrologers it explained the Universe. 
Sun, Earth, and Moon—Source, Product, and Reflector— 
were the ¢hree zm one of the Universe. For these there were 
three symbols, united to form a fourth: the Circle, the 
Cross, the Half-circle, and these three (Sun, Earth, and 
Moon) as One symbolized by the “mystery-planet,” Mer- 
cury, whose symbol was all three combined ( Marcle ) 

Of all Astrology and of all its resulting Occultism “the 
entire symbology is built on these signs, and their arrange- 
ment conveys at once the whole of the hidden meaning. 
The Sun is the centre of our system; its symbol is the 
Circle, which is the sign of perfection. It represents spirit 
—the highest condition we are capable of understanding. 
Behind it is the Logos of our system. His Essence, pour- 
ing out life upon His children, is indicated by the dot always 
placed in the centre of the circle. In manifestation, energy 
works from the centre to the periphery. This essence is the 
WILL in us, or, the spirit in motion. In all Astrological cal- 
culations the Sun is the centre. It represents the I, or Indi- 
viduality in humanity. The Cross represents the Earth, or 
matter. In form it is two straight lines athwart each other, 
producing four acute angles, and expressing duality as op- 
posed to the Unity exhibited by the circle. In these two 


204 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


symbols, we find typified the difference between spirit and 
matter, in the Universe. The Half-circle represents the 
Moon—the collector and preserver of light. It is the great 
moulder of form; the illusion.” 

Thus was the Universe explained as a divine Triad, which 
the Christian theologians called the “ Godhead ’’—using 
symbols peculiar to Christianity. 

A still later evolution of this most ancient analogy is 
found in all systems of Philosophy, beginning with that of 
Plato. 

“The symbol of the mystery-planet, Mercury, for a long 
time was the puzzle of Astrologers ; but we now understand 
it as representing the perfect man. The symbol of Mercury 
expresses the three tn one—body, soul, and spirit united. 
It finally becomes changed into the Uranian symbol of the 
god-like man. 

“Thus the idea of God, gradually formed by man, is a 
reflection from his own mind. Yet, as it is an unveiling 
of the Divine Spirit in man, which is also the Universal 
Spirit, it must give a truthful, though incomplete idea of 
the divine nature. The doctrine of the Trinity may be 
true, although as formulated in creeds it gives distorted 
ideas of the truth. The Universal Existence may be anal- 
ogous, as in the Kosmos of Plato, to the threefold being of 
man, whose physical, psychical, and rational factors are the 
expressions of spirit-activity in association with particular 
phases of matter.” 

“ Aristotle taught that the corporeal has no dimensions 
outside of the three. The Pythagoreans taught that all and 
everything is determined through triplicity: they regarded 
the triad as the most perfect form in the universe; unless it 
were the tetrad, or four, which is the triad more fully de- 
veloped.” 

This development has at last been made in Christian 
Theology by the Roman Church, whose ¢rzad has now be- 
come a ¢etrad—Father, Son, Holy Ghost, and the Virgin 
Mary. Its ultimate Evolution is bound to be a fulfilment 
of the prayer of Jesus and the prophecy of Paul: 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 265 


“That they a// may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me 
and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” 

“And when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then 
shall the Son also himself be subject unto Him that put all 
things under Him, that God may be A zz All.” 

This is simply the old teaching of the Divine Omnipresence 
as found everywhere in the Bible. Just now it is newly 
brought before us in the fifth of the “New Sayings of 
Christ” reported as recently discovered at Behnesch in 
Egypt—“ Jesus saith . . . Wherever there is one alone 
there the 7 Am is withhim. Raise the stone and there thou 
shalt find J7e, cleave the wood and there J Am.” This 
corresponds closely with all the logia of the New Testament, 
which may be summed up in the simple sentence—“ I and 
my Father are one,” as explained by the two analagous sen- 
tences above quoted. 


(a) DIVINE PERSONALITY. 


This teaching of the Divine Omnipresence is by no means 
“ Pantheism”’ in the materialistic or non-personal sense. 

“Whose body Nature ts, but God the soul.” The “parts” 
cannot be more perfect than the “‘ stupendous whole ’’—nor 
can they be more individual or personal. The “ladder 
whose top reaches Heaven and upon which angels ascend 
and descend” cannot be less perfect, but infinitely more 
so—nor can it be less individual or personal, but infinitely 
more so than is any one of the infinite number of rounds 
that compose it. 

Locke defines ferson as ‘a thinking, intelligent being.” 
According to Dr. Paley, personality implies “ consciousness 
of thought.” In these higher, spiritual meanings, divine 
personality 7s an essential characteristic of ‘God the Soul” ; 
it is zecessary as well as reasonable to believe that the “One 
in us,” the “ Allin all” is Person or Personality. 

It may be reasoned out as follows:—All that in man is 
highest and best also must de in Him “ Who is in man, and 
in Whom man is” :—+the same “ highest and best,” only in- 


266 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


finitely beautified and perfected. The very “highest and 
best”? in man is his personality; hence to deny or doubt 
the personality of Him “in whom we live, and move, and 
have our being” is an absurdity. To conceive of any of the 
parts as “higher and better” than The A//, is nonsense in- 
tolerable. That part of The All we call “man” thinks, 
knows, loves, is self-conscitous—that is, is a person, and this 
is his supreme glory and mark of superiority. It is then 
self-evident that Ze A/Z must be a Person in an infinitely 
more glorious and complete sense—must think, and know, 
and love, and be self-conscious as ‘‘ The All in all.” 

Such is the axiom of Divine Personality as suggested by 
the essential teachings of the Bible and of Apostolic Chris- 
tianity. 


LXXIX.—A MAIN REASON WHY SO MANY DISBELIEVE IN 
GOD AND IN IMMORTALITY. 


That is a universal and an eternal law of Condition and of 
Consequence, or of Cause and of Result, which Jesus enunci- 
ated as a first utterance of his divine ministry: ‘‘ Blessed are 
the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” A law equally 
open to and equally inviolable by all, Jew or Gentile, Chris- 
tian or Pagan, now and ever. 

But, as a matter of fact, thus far in the Evolution of Hu- 
mankind the immense masses of men ever have been and are 
very far from “pure in heart”; seemingly make no effort 
and do not even desire to be “pure in heart.” 

So, as Jesus the Christ first recognized and taught, they 
must, little by little, be lifted up and drawn ¢zoward this con- 
dition and its blessed consequence, by attractive representa- 
tions of the character of God. ‘God is your Father, God is 
Love and loves you, all He does is in love for you, all that 
He requires or ever will require is for your good.” Such 
was the Gospel of Jesus and of his early followers. Thus, 
during the first two Christian centuries half the world were 
drawn to self-surrendering, life-consecrating belief in God. 

But, then and thereafter, cold, repellant Dogmatism began 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 267 


to be preached, instead of the ‘Good News.” Mercenary 
salvation—salvation through desire of “a hundred-fold in 
this life’? and Heaven in the life to come, or through fear of 
“ tribulations in this life’? and Hell in the life to come, which 
is Commercialism or self-interest on the part of both God and 
man—began to be proclaimed instead of the Gospel of Love. 
As a consequence the baser motives, instead of the nobler 
ones, were appealed to and converts were bought or compelled 
into self-interested professions of Christianity, instead of be- 
ing attracted or drawn by the Love of God and the Beauty 
of Holiness. So it was increasingly and has continued un- 
ceasingly down to the present time. 

But a nobler or ess base disposition—less open to the baser 
motives—now begins to prevail and, as a consequence, the 
proclaiming of Commercialism—which traditional Ecclesias- 
ticism and “orthodox” Dogmatism always and everywhere 
proclaim—results in making unbelievers faster than in mak- 
ing “converts.” The “accessions” to the various Churches 
are fewer and from the least intelligent and moral classes, 
while the most cultivated and virtuous classes (either quietly 
or with indignant protests) refuse such a mercenary religion 
with its mercenary God and become, many of them, agnos- 
tics if not downright unbelievers. 

The blame and guilt of much if not all of this lies at the 
door of degenerate Christianity—rather at the door of those 
pseudo-custodians of Christianity who, from the fourth cen- 
tury downward and for sundry reasons of personal advantage, 
have caused it to degenerate. 

That this is so and why it is so has been pointedly set 
forth, as follows, in a recent sermon by a well-known “ her- 
etical”’ clergyman of the Church of England: 

“The conception of God’s nature which has been laid be- 
fore us for many years, has brought many men at last to turn 
away from it with dismay and pain. They feel that the mor- 
ality of the pulpit on this matter lags behind the moral feel- 
ing of society. God has been represented, they think, and I 
think with them, as selfish, as seeking His own glory at the 
expense of His creatures’ welfare, as jealous, as arbitrary, as 


268 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


indulging in favoritism, as condemning all for the sake of 
one, as insisting on forms of temporary importance and bind- 
ing them forever on the conscience, as ruining men for mts- 
takes in doctrine, as claiming a blind submission of the consctence 
and the intellect, as vindictive, as the resolute torturer of the 
greater part of the human race by an everlasting punishment 
which presupposes everlasting evil; as, in one word, anything 
rather than the Father revealed in Jesus the Christ. Much 
of this teaching remains still, though it is presented under a 
veil by which its coarser outlines are modified. It is ac- 
cepted by many who either do not possess a strong and indt- 
vidual sense of morality, or who do not think, or prefer not to 
think on the matter, lest they should shake the fabric of their 
easy faith or spoil their religious sentiment. But, those who 
do, and whose moral feeling of right and wrong is sane and 
strong, turn away revolted from a God of this character, be- 
lieve that to be immortally connected with Him would be 
degradation, even the very horror of hell. 

“Not having been taught any other God, and being, to a 
certain degree, culpably lazy about examining into the teach- 
ing of Christianity for themselves, they fall back on their last 
resource, and disbelieve in all Religion. ‘It is better to per- 
ish for ever, than to be the slave of such aruler. We deny 
his existence. But, at the same time, we will be true to our 
sense of right and wrong; we will do what we can to help 
the race; we will have our immortality in the memories of 
the future, or in the Being of Humanity; but, as for our- 
selves, let us cease, for we could not live with the Being who 
has been described to us.’ 

‘““ Now, I believe this to be, and no one need mistake my 
meaning, a really healthy denial of God, for it is founded on 
the denial of @ false God. So far as it is founded on the as- 
sertion of a@ true morality, so far it is, though these men do 
not confess it as such, the assertion of the true God. The 
God who has been preached to men of late has now become 
an idol, that is, a conception of God lower than we ought to 
frame, and a revolt against that conception ts not in reality a 
revolt against God; it is a protest against idolatry. I sym- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 269 


pathize strongly, then, with that part of the infidel effort 
which is directed against these zazmoral views of God’s char- 
acter, though I am pained by the manner in which the attack 
is conducted—and it is my hope that the attack will lead our 
theologians to bring their teaching up to the level of the 
common moral feeling on this subject, and to reveal God as 
the Father of men in all the profound meaning of that term. 
The belief in immortality will then return, for the love of 
God will return to men. For it is impossible for any man to 
clearly see and believe in the Father as revealed in the Christ 
and not passionately desire to draw nearer and nearer to Him 
forever, and not feel that he must live and continue to live for- 
ever. Therefore, in order to restore to men such as I have 
described a belief in immortality, we must restore to them a 
true conception of God. This is, this ought to be, the main 
work of the preachers and teachers of thistime. For as long 
as the morality of the pulpit hangs behind the morality of re- 
ligious-minded men, those religious-minded men wil be infidels.” 


LXXX.—THE ECLECTICISM OF CHRISTIANITY— 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 


In various portions of this volume, but on pages 27-34 in 
particular, the essential eclecticism of Christianity has been 
claimed and variously illustrated. In its methods as well as 
in its materials—in its practical-workings as well as in its 
theories or teachings—it is essentially eclectic; so that all 
of its organic divisions, its Denominations, Sects, or Schisms, 
as they are called—are Providentially overruled to the co- 
operative fulfilment of one great end, vzz.: the purification 
and (through purification) the elevation or “Salvation” of 
human souls. Among other figures to illustrate this, that 
of a vast system of graded schools, commencing with the 
“Kindergarten ’”’ and extending to the University, was used. 
The pictorial or object-lesson Denominations, beginning with 
those which are most “ritualistic” (i. e., sensational or dra- 
matic) take human souls in their zzfantzle or least developed 
stages and start them upward. In proportion as they “ grow 


270 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


in grace and in the knowledge of God” they will graduate 
from one department of organized Christianity to another, 
(from one Denomination to another) in each advance leav- 
ing behind the chzldishness of past developments and “ reach- 
ing forward” to the manliness of those which are before. 
“ When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a 
child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put 
away childish things.” So, from the most ritualistic (kin- 
dergarten and primary) Denominations upward, each may 
have its recognized function, and all co-work to one great 
end. Instead of sectarian rivalries and antagonisms there 
should be loving co-operation. Each individual should be in 
whatever grade of the Church Catholic his developments fit 
him for—which may always be determined by his own choice 
of what interests and helps him most. There let him remain, 
helping and being helped, till he unmistakably hears the 
Inner Voice saying, ‘Come up higher,’—graduate into a 
higher department of the Church Catholic. Then (in spite 
of what any human voice or earthly interest may say) let 
him change his Denomination to another better suited to his 
developing manliness. ‘This one thing I do, forgetting the 
things that are behind and aspiring to the things that are 
before, I press forward.’ So all the Denominations may 
have their recognized uses. 

A less dignified illustration has somewhere been hinted, 
which the author may be pardoned for here elaborating to 
suit, what seems to be, the peculiar function of each of the 
best-known Denominations of Christians: ‘ Washed their 
robes and made them white’’—is one of many texts by which 
the figure is suggested. In any well-regulated process of 
“washing and making white” robes or clothes of any sort, 
in our day, there are several successive stages: Furst, the 
soaking and soaping; second, the boiling and scouring; ¢hzrd, 
the rinsing and wringing ; fourth, the drying and starching ; 
jifth, the smoothing and folding. 

Using these common-place terms (as the Master did those 
of salt, candles, bread-making, clothes-mending, and other 
similar ones) it may be said (without intended offence to 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 271 


any) that each organized body of Christians has its own 
peculiar function in some one of the above-named processes 
as applied to the sanctification of the Church in general and 
of its individual members in particular. 

The first process seems to be that peculiar to the more 
“ritualistic ’’ bodies as the Roman, Greek, and Anglican Cath- 
olic sects; the second, to the more aggressive bodies as the 
Methodists and the Salvation Armies; the ¢/zrd, to the more 
puritanic bodies as the Baptists and Independents or Con- 
eregationalists; the fourth, to the more formalistic bodies as 
the Presbyterians, Broad-Church Episcopalians, and Luther- 
ans; the fifth, to the more rationalistic bodies as the Uni- 
tarians, Progressive Friends, and other similar organizations 
of Liberal Christians. 

Though a somewhat facetious illustration and common- 
place indeed, yet it is suggestive and appropriate. Through- 
out the Bible the figure is used in such phrases as ‘‘ wash 
me,” “purge me,” “cleanse me” as applied to the individ- 
ual; and “without spot or wrinkle or any such thing” as 
applied to the Church. To fulfil any part, however primary 
or humble, of this Divine Process of making clean is no un- 
worthy function. As to the illustration itself— What God 
hath cleansed, that call not thou common.” 

More elegant (though less Biblical) is the illustration which, 
as a portrayal of the world-wide eclecticism of Christianity, is 
so forcible that it is quoted in full on succeeding pages. 


[See pages 293-206. | 


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SOME REASONS FOR AND METHODS OF 
mUbBRERARY CRITICISMS AsvAPPEIBD eT OATIE 
BIBLE AND TO CHRISTIANITY IN COMMON 
WITH ALL OTHER LITERATURE AND SYSTEMS 
OF RELIGION 

BEING EXPLANATIONS 
COMMON TO THE COMPANION VOLUMES 
“ANCIENT SACRED SCRIPTURES OF 
PER W.OR IEDM 
AND 
“ RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY.” 


274 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“Welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth’s smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go!’ 


“For this old world of ours needs bracing up, and needs it 
badly. It hasneeded it before: granted. There were times 
worse than these: grant this also. But we were not living then: 
we are living now; and the world was never before sinning 
against as much light as it is now, and never before was there 
quite so much ingenuity displayed in calling wrong things by 
right names and right things by wrong names. Downright hon- 
esty of speech is a pressing need of the hour. Soft and silken 
phraseology is covering a multitude of sins. The men who want 
the earth are finding persuasive and pretty reasons for it. Mer- 
cenary considerations are in danger of becoming fundamental 
principles. The straight line between good and evil is getting 
warped ; and the old questions, ‘Is it right?’ “Is it wrong?’ are 
losing their grip. We are assuming a financial attitude, instead 
of a moral attitude, toward things... It is time to change, to 
take on a new tone, to preach righteousness, to tell men that the 
supreme reason for doing right is because it is right.” 


“We gain not heaven by a single bound, 
But we build the ladder by which we rise ; 
And we climb to its summit round by round, 
From the lowly earth to the lofty skies.” 


“Tt is one of the noblest human instincts that we cannot feel 
within us the glory and power of a real conviction without earn- 
estly striving to make that conviction pass into other minds.” 


“Our knowledge has run ahead of our virtue. Our scientific 
progress is far greater than our moral progress. The platform on 
which society stands is all crank-sided : the scientific side is too 
high for the moral and religious side. I call on you, cultivators 
of art and preachers of religion, that you hold up yourend. I 
know it is by far the heavier end ; but the more is the reason why 
you should lift heartily and with a will, and, more than all, that 
you should lift all together.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 275 


LXXXI.—RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY AND SACRED 
SCRIPTURES. 


(a) Explanatory Note. 


The two volumes “ Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the 
World” and ‘“Renascent Christianity ’’ are designed as 
companion volumes. As such the Explanations which fol- 
low are common to both. 

The latter volume, which has the general title ‘‘ Renascent 
Christianity, A Forecast of the Twentieth Century,” has 
been especially prepared in the interest of what is now every- 
where known as Higher Criticism :—most inadequate it is 
and utterly unworthy, but yet designed, dy zts very tmperfec- 
tions, to elicit and even to compel more adequate and 
worthy attempts. As such it would not be complete with- 
out a setting forth of some special Methods of Criticism and 
of Translation such as those according to which the volume 
“Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World” has been pre- 
pared. 


(5) Motzves. 


In spirit and in general facts, though not in personal de- 
tails, the following conclusion of a notable volume may 
serve both as Preface and Conclusion for this and its com- 
panion volume : 

‘‘T should not speak of myself personally, were it not for 
the desire which every reader naturally feels to know the 
probable motives of one who addresses him on any impor- 
tant topic of practical interest. Disconnected, in a great 
degree, from the common pursuits of the world, and zzde- 
pendent of any party or of any man’s favor, there is, perhaps, 
scarcely an individual to whom it can bea matter of less 
private concern what opinions others may hold. No one 
will suppose, that, if literary fame were my object, I should 
have sought it by such discussions as these in which I have 
engaged. Even among those who have no prejudices in 
favor of the errors opposed, much indifference and much 
prejudice to the subject must be overcome, before I can ex- 


276 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


pect such volumes to find any considerable number of 
readers. . . . I have been writing, as it were, on the 
tombstones of those who were most dear to me, with feel- 
ings of the character, purposes, and duties of life which my 
own death-bed will not strengthen. I may, then, claim at 
least that share of unsuspicious attention to which everyone 
is entitled who cannot be supposed to have any other motive in 
maintaining his opinions, than a very serious, earnest, and en- 
during conviction of their truth and importance.” 


(c) The “ retrograde movement.” 


Traditionalism, in its assertive and non-critical form, is just 
now exulting over what it calls the ‘‘ scientific confirmations ”’ 
of its methods in a recently published volume by a well- 
known author. “It may not display a scientific temper of 
mind, but it is a splendid tribute to Harnack’s accuracy of 
methods, that on all sides men accept the general conclusions 
arrived at in his latest work before having examined his 
reasoning. Of course many of those interested have held 
this same conclusion under the authority of tradition without 
regard for what criticism might say, but now, without a de- 
tailed knowledge of his argument, they feel assured that it is 
the conclusion of Criticism, szmply because Harnack says so.” 
Surely ’t is true that a drowning man will clutch at a straw! 
The “straw,” and the only one in the volume referred to, 
that can save this form of Traditionalism from going down 
for the “third and last time”’ is presented in a single sen- 
tence, by which “the colossal labor of which the book we 
refer to isa monument can be summed up.” And what is 
this summing up? ‘ The literature of the Christian Church, 
from the earliest writings of the New Testament canon to 
the time of Irenzeus is proved by critical investigation to be 
‘in the main points and in most of its details, from the point 
of view of literary history, veracious and trustworthy.’ ”’ 

In spite of the “colossal labor” and the unquestioned 
worth of the volume thus summed up, there is in it nothing 
at all but unceasing and strong confirmations of what all 
sifters of Tradition, verifiers of History, and “higher critics ” 


RENASCEN ID CHKRISLIANI LY. 277 


both of the Bible and of the Church (who have called them- 
selves Christians) from Origen, Arius, and Eusebius down to | 
Channing, Norton, and Martineau, and from these down to 
all the “ higher critics ” of the day (who still retain the Chris- 
tian name) have unanimously held and taught.—Namely, 
that “in the main points and in most of the details” the 
canonical Scriptures and other historically recognized “ litera- 
ture of the Christian Church” are “ veracious and trust- 
worthy” down “to the time of Irenaeus.” 

(1) The time of Irenzeus (the second century) is just the 
period to which unadulterated Apostolic Christianity ex- 
tended, and at which strong tendencies to revert and rapid 
degeneration set in. Apostolic Christianity was that new- 
born Religion of Eclecticism presented to the world by the 
lips of Jesus and the pen of Paul. For a century nothing, 
save what those divine lips had unquestionably uttered and 
that truth-recording pen had unquestionably confirmed, was 
received or tolerated as Christianity. Then, at “the time of 
Irenzeus,” began that “falling away” and arose those “ false 
prophets” predicted by both Jesus and Paul. 

Judaism was Platonized into a“ system” of Christian Dog- 
mas; Christianity was Fudaized into a “system ” of Christian 
Ecclesiasticism and Ritual; Paganism was Chrestzantzed into 
an unverified and unverifiable “system” of Christian Tra- 
ditionalism :—so began the “falling away.” At the same 
time arose and, by the voice and vote of the semi-Heathen 
populace, prevailed the “ false prophets ”"—Neo Platonizers, 
Neo Judaizers, Neo Paganizers too numerous to mention, 
down to those busy makers and stout defenders of that 
present Traditionalism which arrives at, and holds fast to, 
certain popularized and profitable conclusions “under the 
authority of tradition, without regard for what criticism 
might say :”—which Tradition it insists upon calling, and 
(under penalty of excommunication) requiring all others to 
call History! All this, and not Apostolic Christianity down 
to “the time of Irenzus,” is what Higher Criticism objects 
to and rejects. It accepts, as it ever has accepted gladly— 
from the time of Origen, the first of the higher critics, down- 


278 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ward—the summing up of Harnack’s recent volume: that, 
the canonical Christian literature of the first century after 
the death of Jesus the Christ is ‘‘ veracious and trustworthy 
in the ain points and in most of the details.” But this has 
no bearing—except of condemnation—upon the unverified, | 
unverifiable, and before-that-time-unheard-of (by Jesus and 
the Apostles, utterly rejected) traditions which began to 
prevail in the Church of the third century, and have more 
and more widely prevailed ever since. All that Higher 
Criticism asks or has ever asked is that whatever is called 
History shall have adequate historic confirmations ; and that 
no one shall henceforth be required—on penalty of either ex- 
communication or of being branded as a heretic—to believe 
as History what has not been, dy commonly accepted literary 
methods, historically confirmed. The “ maznu points and most 
of the details’ of the Bible are thus historically confirmed, 
and these it gladly accepts. But this does not imply the 
acceptance of the whole Bible in a// its “ points” and “ de- 
tails,” much less the multitudinous traditions about the con- 
tents and meanings of the Bible which have come down to 
us from the third, fourth, and later centuries. Harnack’s 
“retrograde movement” is well named if it be taken to 
imply, what doubtless it does imply, a going back to 
original sources and demanding that nothing shall be im- 
posed as an essential Creed or as essential Christianity,—which 
is not clearly found in the canonical and historically verified 
records of the first century after the death of him, whom all 
the world acknowledges as The Founder of Christianity. 


(2) Special Explanations. 


‘© For every word men may not chide or pletne 
For in this world certain ne wight ther ts 
That he ne doth or sayeth sometime amis.” 


In issuing a new Edition of “ Ancient Sacred Scriptures 
of the World ”’ three special explanations are called for: 

First,—with reference to the re-translation of some portions 
of the Bible, especially of some familiar phrases and words 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 279 


of the New Testament, which the author has made. Why 
not accept the received version, or at least the new revised 
version and leave the matter there? The author has done 
this invariably except in case of phrases and words which, as 
all unprejudiced critics agree, utterly misrepresent (in the 
accepted versions) the meanings and conceptions of the 
original utterances. Asa matter of fact all the “ orthodox” 
translators have read modern doctrines into certain of the 
original phrases; and have forced into some of the original 
words meanings that were entirely foreign to them when 
spoken or written. To do this is to do violence to the His- 
toric Sense of to-day and to profane, as well as to pervert, 
History. The Bible as History or as Literature should be 
translated, in all respects, as other History or Literature is 
honestly and honorably translated. To impose one’s own 
doctrine upon, or to read one’s own meaning into, a trans- 
lation or transcription of any sort is a deception or a fraud 
not to be fora moment tolerated by the Historic Sense of Zo- 
day. Everywhere else this is so (in these enlightened days) 
and so it must henceforth be in Biblical Criticism,—as also it 
must be in the Criticism of Theological and Ecclesiastical 
Literature in general. As an illustration :—The founders of 
all the great Religions of the world proclaimed themselves 
as Prophets of God, “one with Him” simply as His commis- 
sioned vicegerents or revealers. Their zmediate followers 
so understood, received and recorded their teachings. But 
later generations came to believe them to be God Himself in 
human form and devised systems of belief and of homage 
accordingly. This they had a right to dotf they chose; but 
to impose their belief upon, or to re-read their homage into 
the original records, in their translations and transmissions, 
was, 1s, and ever must be an outrage upon Frstory. 

Let any, even most intelligent and least prejudiced, Christian look at a pic- 
ture, statue, relic, book, shrine or temple of Buddhism (or of any other Re- 
ligion except his own) before or about which millions of devotees are prostrate, 
and he can easily understand how ¢Aey read their own superstitions into their 
venerated object or volume. In the same way the most intelligent and least 


prejudiced of Buddhists (and of others) easily understand how we, as ‘‘ orthodox” 
Christians, read our superstitions into our Bible, Traditions, and Symbols, 


280 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


** O wad some power the giftie gie us, 
To see ourselves as others seeus ! 
Lt wad frae monte a blunder free us, 
And foolish notion.” 


Exactly this has transpired also in all the “ received” or 
“accepted ” versions of the Bible and especially of the New 
Testament. From the third century down to to-day the 
vox popult of the Christian Church has proclaimed certain 
systems of Doctrine and of Worship as true and binding 
uponall. This they (had, and) havea right to do tf they 
choose. But to so translate or transmit the original records 
as to do violence to their original signification is to profane 
those records, and also to commit an outrage upon History. 
What did that phrase mean, what did that word imply Zo the 
speaker or the writer ?—This is the one and only question 
that an honest translator or transcriber will ever allow him- 
self to ask. 

(a) When the disciple said or the Apostle wrote ‘“ Rabbi” 
or “ Ad6énai”’ as applied to Jesus, did he mean “ Master” or 
“Teacher” and not “God” or any word synonymous with 
“God’’? If so, then “ Master” or ‘“ Teacher’ we should 
translate and transmit it faithfully, whether our version be 
“received ” or not. 


The persistent translation of such terms as the Hebrew Rabboni or Rabbi, 
and the Greek despotés or kurios as ‘‘ Lord” when applied to Jesus, while in 
all other cases the same terms are translated (as they uniformly mean) ‘‘ Master,” 
‘“ Teacher,” or ‘‘ Sir,” is a notable indication of the literary untruthfulness of 
Theological Dogmatism. These terms, unless immediately joined to or stand- 
ing unquestionably for JEHOVAH, or ALMIGHTY ONE, or THE ETERNAL, or 
SUPREME GOD can never be translated ‘‘ LorpD” except through irreverence as 
well as literary untruthfulness. 

It is no acceptable argument and no excuse to say that ‘‘ to the Church, in a 
later period, was revea/ed the truth that Jesus Christ was the ALMIGHTY ONE 
in human form.”” Those who are the speakers and writers of the New Testa- 
ment had no such reve/ations made to them, had no such knowledge or concep- 
tion—as all intelligent critics of the Bible agree. Hence, to make them speak 
and write as if they conceived or believed what we know they did not is (again 
we say) an outrage upon History and upon Literary Criticism. The only honest 
or honorable way is to degim the use of terms, words, or phrases synonymous 
with the ALMIGHTY ONE as applied to Jesus the Christ where the revelation of 
his Supreme Deity is alleged to have been actually made and received,—in the 
writings or traditions of the second, third, or fourth century, as the case may 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 281 


be. But let no one, any longer, presume Zo go back and force it upon the lips 
and pens of those to whom it was not yet ‘‘ revealed” —-namely, the speakers and 
writers of the Bible. Against this both Historic Verity and Literary Criticism 
protest as falsehood and fraud. 

The same may be said of all the doctrines ‘‘ revealed to the Church in later 
periods” which have been ead into the Bible through sectarian translations or 
transcriptions. Let whosoever will receive, believe, and proclaim these doc- 
trines as ‘‘ later revelations made to the Church” ; om this ground let him be 
‘‘Churchman,” ‘‘ Romanist,” ‘‘ Orthodox,” ‘‘ Heterodox” or whatever he 
may choose. But let him not falsify the Original Records in order to establish 
his Church, or to maintain his Hierarchy, or to prove his Creed! Let him not 
compel the speakers or writers of the Bible to testify to the verity of things 
which their eyes had not seen, their ears had not heard, nor their minds con- 
ceived! To do this is to ‘‘ sin against the Holy Ghost” and to “‘ lie 4074 unto 
men and unto God” ! 

The fruitful cause of all this manipulation of and doing violence to the 
Original Records may be traced to(what we may call) Systemism or, what is the 
same thing, Sectarianism in Religion. Some individual or individuals started 
with a personally pleasing or profitable proposition ; this proposition soon be- 
came a premise, the premise grew into a fundamental dogma and this became 
at length an Essential Doctrine or, an Infallible Creed. This proposition, 
premise, dogma, Doctrine or Creed once accepted all the rest inevitably fol- 
lowed—the School, the System, the Sect, the True Church, the Infallible 
Hierarchy. So have arisen the countless conflicting Religious Denominations. 

Each Systemarian developed into a Sectarian ; and, when put on the de- 
fensive by all the others, appealed (in his straits) to the Bible and forced from 
it desired confirmation ; sometimes so translated and (in earlier periods) even 
interpolated it as to make zt directly teach his fundamental proposition. Asa 
consequence the world is full of Trinitarians, Unitarians, etc., or of Papists, 
Congregationalists, etc. ; and the chief aim of each one of the hundreds of Sys- 
tems or of Sects is fo prove from the Bibleand thus promulgate its fundamental 
proposition, whatever it may be. 

In Religion, the same as in everything else, what is now needed and what 
henceforth we must have in rapidly increasing numbers is (to use a new term) 
Trutharians or Truthists—LOVERS-OF-THE-TRUTH, ‘‘the whole Truth and 
nothing but the Truth.” In Goethe’s words: ‘‘ I desire nothing but pure Truth 
and have no system ; so everything fits in.” This is the Divine Eclecticism of 
Jesus the Christ and of all who, like his Apostles, ‘‘ have been with and learned 
of him.” Such &c/ectics are the only ones who are capable of being honest and 
true as translators or as transcribers of the Original Records. 


(b) When the disciples said or the Apostles wrote “Son 
of God” as applied to Jesus did they mean JEHOVAH, or 
ALMIGHTY ONE, or THE ETERNAL, or SUPREME GOD in 
human form? Did they mean a“ Person of the Godhead ?” 
Did they mean “Deity incarnate?” If zot, then let no 


282 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


translator or transcriber by any phrase, word, letter, or mark 
of punctuation even intimate that such was the original 
meaning. 

And so on for various similar terms and phrases. It is not 
at all a question of what, as a later revelation or unfolding, 
“the Church” came to believe; but what the word or phrase 
then and there meant. 

One may believe that Czsar was Deity incarnate, or that 
Napoleon’s or Wellington’s victories were miraculous; he 
may formulate his belief and proclaim and enforce it as 
widely as possible; but he must not outrage History by 
translating original words into meanings foreign to them, or 
by transcribing original phrases into teachings never designed 
by those who uttered them. Once this might have been 
done; it has been done, unceasingly and universally, till 
now; but zt can be done no longer. The Historic Sense, 
newly developed and newly developing, forbids it henceforth— 
with regard to the Bible as well as all other books; with re- 
gard to Church History and Religious Literature in common 
with all other departments of History and of Literature. With 
this understanding of the case a few familiar words and 
phrases (further explained in Preface of “Sacred Scriptures ”) 
have been translated or transcribed according to their um- 
questioned original meaning instead of the modern dogmatic 
meaning of all the “‘ authorized ”’ or “ received ”’ versions. 

Second.—Another explanation is called for with reference to 
the progress of Higher Criticism since the main preparation 
of this volume was made. At its first issue, fourteen years 
ago, a frequent comment of its kindly disposed critics was, 
that it was ‘so far in advance of the age.’’ Now, by the 
same critics, it is more likely to be pronounced “ behind the 
age.’ So rapid has been the growth of reverent Criticism 
and of ratzonal Religious Comprehension combined! And, 
with all the profound investigations and new light—from the 
time and school of Bauer down to those of Harnack—there 
has developed no actual refutation and no certain contradic- 
tion of a single important position taken in the published 
Preface and Explanations so many years ago. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 283 


Third.—An additional explanation is offered with reference 
to the persistent and almost universal objection of “ ortho- 
dox” adherents of all Religions alike—Christians the same 
as Moslems, Buddhists, and the rest—to any expurgation, 
compilation, or change (except traditional additions and 
expansions, of which they can never have enough) of their 
Sacred Books. In no other department of History or of 
Literature in general is this objection ever made. Every- 
where else expurgations, compilations, and changes to modern 
word and phrase (more expressive of original meanings) are 
called for. The critical study of the Bible as Literature (the 
same exactly as any of the other Sacred Scriptures of the 
World) demands similar expurgations, compilations, and 
changes. 

‘“‘Many persons have been taught from childhood to asso- 
ciate a false meaning with words and texts of the Bible. 
This meaning, borrowed from the schools of technical the- 
ology, is that which immediately presents itself to their 
minds, when those words and texts occur. They can hardly 
avoid considering the expositions so familiar to them, as 
those alone that could be obvious to an unprejudiced reader. 
Fle who would break the associations which they have between 
certain words and a certain meaning, and substitute the true 
sense for that to which they are accustomed, appears to them 
to be doing violence to the language of Scripture. 

“‘ Now these prejudices, so far as they are capable of being 
removed, can be removed only by establishing correct princi- 
ples of interpretation, applying them to the subject in hand, 
and pointing out the true or the probable meaning of the 
more important passages that have been misunderstood.” 

“The literary critic—the critic of the right sort—does just 
this thing. He takes a book of which we wish to know, and 
gives us the very best it contains; he picks out its fine pas- 
sages, and by so doing sets them out in a bold relief which 
they did not possess in the book itself ; he takes the volume 
and sets it in its proper proportion,—gives us its historical 
relations, and from his store of knowledge and varied read- 
ing delivers to us a compact and vital parcel that probably 


284 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


carries with it far more of permanent value than we could 
have in any way gained ourselves from actual perusal of the 
book.” 

What Higher Criticism claims is the privilege of rendering 
the Bible as we do all other books, not according to verbal 
meanings (which may be numerous and conflicting as well as 
absurd) but according to evident or probable orzginal mean- 
tngs—the meanings of those who uttered the words, whether 
by pen or voice. This has been the principle of all intelligent 
translations and interpretations back to the time when Cicero 
elucidated it in the following words: 

‘“‘ What law, what decree of the Senate, what ordinance of 
a magistrate, what treaty or convention, or, to return to pri- 
vate concerns, what testament, what judicial decision, what 
stipulation, what form of agreement, may not be invalidated 
or annulled, of we insist on bending the meaning to the words, 
and neglect the intent, purport, and will of the writer ? Truly, 
our familiar and everyday discourse would have little co- 
herence, if we lay in wait for each other’s words. There 
would be no domestic government, if we allowed our slaves 
to obey our commands zm their verbal meaning, and not in 
that sense in which the words are to be understood.” 

A learned professor of Theology and translator of the Bible 
has said: “ This principle of interpretation is so constantly 
present to the mind of everyone, and is acted upon so un- 
consciously in reading all other books but the Scrtptures, 
that, except in reference to them, it is scarcely necessary to 
announce it or advert to it.” 

‘In many cases we at once reject the literal meaning of 
words, and understand them as figurative, because if we did 
not do this they would convey some meaning which contra- 
dicts common sense; and it would be inconsistent with our 
notions of the writer to suppose him to intend such a mean- 
ing. Men’s minds being constituted alike, so that, when a 
subject is clearly understood, what appears an absurdity to 
one will appear an absurdity to another, we do not ascribe 
an absurd meaning to the language of any writer, except 
upon the special consideration of some well-known peculiarity 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 285 


of belief, or defect or cloudiness of intellect. Yet a great 
part of all language diverted in any way from its literal 
sense w7l/ bear an absurd meaning, that is, admit of being so 
interpreted as to be absurd when the words alone are regarded.” 

“ But this principle has not been regarded in the interpre- 
tation of Scripture. The believer in transubstantiation con- 
tends that we are to understand verbally the declaration: 
‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his 
blood, you have not life within you.’ The sect of the Anti- 
nomians would have us take to the letter the words of St. 
Paul, as rendered in the Common Version: ‘ But to him that 
worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, 
his faith is counted for righteousness.’ And of the believers 
in the doctrine of Atonement, some contend, that, when the 
Apostle speaks of the church as being ‘ purchased by the 
blood of Christ,’ or, as they would have it read, ‘by the blood 
of God,’ we are to regard the blood of the Son as being paid, 
as it were, to the Father to deliver us from his wrath. All 
the errors connected with Christianity have appealed for 
support to such verbal misinterpretations of particular pas- 
sages. Hence it has been said, that anything may be proved 
from the Scriptures. And it is true, that, if we proceed in 
so erroneous a method, and neglect every fact and principle 
which ought to be attended to in the interpretation of lan- 
guage, there is no meaning too false, too absurd, or too 
ridiculous, to be educed from the words of Scripture, or, 
equally, from those of any popular writing.” 


(CL Camm CCELULI Lier 


In all History there is not a greater fiction than is the 
widely prevailing belief that there is, of the Bible, and par- 
ticularly of the New Testament, a “ Received Text ” which 
is reliable and final. Ascertain what the “ Received Text ” 
truly means and you have the exact and full meaning of the 
original speakers and writers of the Bible—is the common 
“orthodox” notion! To all Protestants what is commonly 
Meant by thems eccived mlextmancnthe «Greek Newsrhesta- 
ment as published at Leyden by Elcevir’s Sons, in 1633, 


286 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


with a preface in which the publishers announced, “ Zertum 
ergo habes nunc ab omnibus receptum.” So said the pub- 
lishers, advertising their publication as “a text now received 
by all’’—a text formed by an unknown editor, in the days 
when what we now call Biblical Criticism was utterly un- 
known. This is the ‘‘ Textus Receptus.”” It seems to have 
been collated from the editions of Erasmus, Robert Stephens, 
and Beza which were chiefly used for the King James trans- 
lation into English, first published in 1611. Those editions 
all were, as nineteenth-century criticism has shown, crude 
and unreliable. Their common basis doubtless was that 
earliest edition of the Greek Testament printed in 1514 con- 
tained in the Complutensian Polyglot. For this “the manu- 
scripts which were used have never been identified . . . and 
there has been much controversy respecting their value.” 
We have the authority of Bishop Marsh, that the text which 
they have given almost invariably agrees with that of the 
modern Greek manuscripts,—such as were written in the 


thirteenth century or later) “There cannot be a .doune 
therefore,’ he says, “that the Complutensian text was 
formed from modern manuscripts alone.” Wetstein and 


other scholarly critics came to the same conclusion. 

Taking this unreliable edition as their chief help, the ver- 
sions of those who prepared the way for the King James 
translation and for the “ Textus Receptus”’ were also unre- 
liable. 

Of the edition by Erasmus in 1516, he himself says: 
“ Precipitatum fut verius quam editum—it was driven head- 
long through the press rather than edited.”’ His publisher 
drove him on in order that he might issue his edition in ad- 
vance of a new issue of the Complutensian Polyglot. ‘Only 
four or five manuscripts were used, all of them modern, and, 
with one exception, of very little value.’ Erasmus was a 
scholar worthy of the highest respect and admiration, but 
he edited the Greek Testament, to use the language of 
Griesbach, “as he could, from a very few manuscripts and 
those quite modern, with no other helps except the Latin 
Vulgate in an interpolated state, and the writings of a few 
inaccurately edited Fathers.”’ 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 287 


—— 


Stephens’s edition closely follows the text as given in the 
Complutensian and has no original value. ‘“ The splendor of 
its typography, and the display of various readings, appear, 
however, to have given this edition a reputation to which it 
had no title from intrinsic merit. Its credit among Protes- 
tants was also doubtless enhanced by the fact that Stephens, 
who had been much harassed by the bigoted doctors of the 
Sorbonne, withdrew to Geneva soon after its publication, 
and announced himself a convert to the doctrines of the 
Reformation.” 

The only one who clearly went back of the thirteenth 
century Greek manuscripts was Beza. For his five editions, 
published in 1565-1598, he had some valuable ancient manu- 
scripts. “ But he made very little use of them. He mostly 
followed the text of Stephens’s edition, and where he differed 
from it often altered it for the worse, sometimes introducing 
readings on mere conjecture, and frequently on very slight 
authority.” 

Such was the material out of which were developed the 
King James translation of the New Testament and the 
“Textus Receptus,” both of which among Protestants have 
been popularly considered, and almost adored as infallible, for 
now nearly three centuries. 

But during these centuries a vast amount of newly dis- 
covered critical materials have been gathered and are now 
available. Hundreds of manuscripts never before examined 
for critical purposes; vast collections of various readings 
made by such laborious scholars as Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, 
Griesbach, Matthzi, Alter, Birch, Scholz, Tischendorf, Tre- 
gelles, and many others down to Harnack; diligent, scholarly 
and zmpartzal collations and comparisons of uncial and other 
ancient manuscripts, of various versions and of numerous 
New Testament quotations in the writings of the Christian 
Fathers—all this and much more has developed during the 
past three centuries, and chiefly during the last half of the 
present century. Besides this large accumulation of materials 
for critical purposes, the crztical faculty and the historic sense 
—both so essential to the proper use of the materials—are 


288 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


SIE iy Et i mune eB aE ap 
the peculiar developments of the nineteenth century ; indeed 
are just beginning to develop in their ¢ruly non-partisan and 
absolutely unprejudiced sense. The conclusion is that we are 
just getting ready to begin a “literary,” that is an impartially 
critical and an accurately historic study of the Bible. Such 
a study is essential to its proper understanding and its high- 
est usefulness. It is demanded by the zucreasing honesty as 
well as by the higher intelligence of to-day. It will consti- 
tute the most sacred task and produce the most glorious re- 
sults of the twentieth century. It will end in a “ Received 
Text ” which all who intelligently accept the Christian name 
will gladly acknowledge; and also in “ Received Transla- 
tions,” into all tongues, which he who runs may read. 

“ And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision, and 
make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth wt.” 

[To add, even a feeble impulse, to this sacred work jus? 
beginning and so to contribute, even a little to its glorious 
outcome is the main purpose of the companion volumes— 
“ Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World ” and “ Renascent 
Christianity.’ 


(f) The Polychrome Edttion of the Bible. 


There is now in course of publication what is to be known 
as “The Polychrome Edition of the Bible.” The most 
learned of the critical and at the same time reverent students 
of the Bible have found that most, if not all, of its books 
(both of the Old Testament and of the New) have been 
compiled from previously existing documents; that some of 
them are of composite authorship, and that many of them 
have been added to or changed since their first composition. 
To indicate these changes, additions, composite authorships 
and compilations the above-named Bible is now being printed, 
with specific colors to designate each class of departures from 
what were probably the original and reliable documents. 
The most eminent Biblical scholars of the world are engaged 
in the work; but only the Old Testament is, thus far, in 
course of preparation. We learn from a recent review that 
the book of Genesis is to be in eight colors, Leviticus in two, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 289 


Sr a a gD Se on 


Joshua in seven, Samuel in eight, Job in three, Chronicles in 
four, Ezra and Nehemiah in nine—each color indicating a 
distinct class of variations. Doubtless when the New Testa- 
ment has been sufficiently studied, the now rapidly sharpen- 
ing sense of Historic and of Literary Criticism will unravel 
the contents of its various books, with similar results. The 
prediction may be ventured that at least eight colors will be 
used for the book of Matthew, two for Mark, seven for Luke, 
eight for John, three for The Acts, four for the Pauline 
Epistles, and nine for the General Epistles and The Revela- 
tion. Thus, or in some other way, later if not sooner, the 
genuine and the important will be separated from the 
spurious and the unimportant in the Bible; the wheat will 
be garnered and the chaff burned, the trees bringing forth 
good fruit will stand and those that are fruitless will be 
cut down. 

More than twenty years ago this same work of sifting and 
discriminating was systematically commenced and studiously 
continued by the author of this volume. Anardent student 
of the Bible from youth up, and improving every possible 
advantage to study it both devoutly and understandingly, 
he at length, as pastor of a large and critical congregation, 
felt the necessity of a Compilation of Sacred Scriptures which 
should (so far as possible) contain nothing but the uzques- 
tionably genuine and the actually important. No sucha Com- 
pilation existed, or seemed then to be promised ; so he felt 
constrained to undertake the task himself. Devoting the 
leisure (often also the midnight) hours of several successive 
years to the study and detail required, the volume known as 
“Ancient Sacred Scriptures of the World” was the result. 
By no means does the Compiler and Editor of that volume 
consider it faultless or final. It was at first, (and now again 
is), presented only as an humble attempt at what needed 
greatly to be done. Others are now beginning to do the 
same, and doubtless will do it in a far more scholarly and 
worthy manner. At the best it is designed to be only 
a makeshift ; a temporary construction, anticipating and 
awaiting more permanent ones. As such (with many apol- 


290 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ogies for its errors and defects) it is now offered to the public 
in a new edition uniform with this volume—which has been 
prepared as its general elucidation and introduction. The 
Polychrome Edition of the Bible, in its completed form, can- 
not be issued for some time to come; and, besides being 
very large and expensive, can never be comprehensible or 
convenient for ordinary daily and devotional uses. It must 
be a Student’s Volume, chiefly to be used for critical and 
literary purposes. From it Compilations doubtless will be 
made of a nature similar to that of “ Ancient Sacred Script- 
ures of the World.” When this shall have been done, so 
vastly superior in scholarship and in judicious selections and 
arrangements will they unquestionably be, that all their fore- 
runners which have devoutly striven “to prepare the way ” 
will gladly withdraw. 


(¢) Confirming Citations from various authors. 


“No book in the world could bear such rules and modes 
of interpretation, as have been applied to the Bible. In all 
books, except scientific treatises, free use is made of meta- 
phor and hyperbole, which are always defined and limited 
by what goes before and what follows, but which, taken by 
themselves and explained literally, would imply the most 
puerile and absurd notions. Now the fashion among theo- 
logians has been Zo set up the seeming signification of some 
three or four tsolated clauses in the Bible, as overweighing the 
clear and acknowledged tenor of the entire Scriptures. 

I can best illustrate the prevalent mode of Scriptural inter- 
pretation, by supposing a case. Suppose that, fifteen or 
twenty centuries hence, there should be remaining some two 
or three authentic biographies of Napoleon Bonaparte. 
Suppose that in these, written by admiring Frenchmen, it 
should be said of him: ‘He was a very God among his 
soldiers,—adoring millions prostrated themselves before 
him,—he took in the nations of the earth at a glance,—his 
will was omnipotent.’ Suppose that, though elsewhere 
throughout these books Napoleon was perpetually talked 
of as a man, and the books taken as a whole made utter 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 29! 
Peete arn AN ey ee Oe be Si Ve Poe ipney Min SOON ie EIU cay ARN 
nonsense upon the supposition that he was not a man, there 
yet should arise a set of critics who maintained that Napo- 
leon was a divine being. . . . These critics would aptly 
represent the generality of modern theologians and biblical 
enterpreters. . . . Lord Bacon’s criticism on Aristotle 
applies: ‘He had already decided, without having properly 
consulted facts as the basis of his decisions and axioms ; 
and, having so decided, he drags facts along as a captive, con- 
strained to accommodate themselves to his dectstons. ” 

“One curious fact shows how this doctrine is supported 
by the fear that, zf a single verse of the Bible 1s admitted to 
be unsound, the authority of the whole will be gone. Scholars 
of all denominations admit that there are mistranslations 
and interpolations in our Bible which ought not to be there. 
Some years ago the Committee on Versions of the American 
Bible Society, containing eminent scholars, all of Orthodox 
denominations, prepared an amended edition of the English 
version. They did not make a new translation, nor amend 
the errors of the old one, nor even improve the text where tt ts 
admitted to be faulty. They only corrected some palpable 
misprints, and altered the headings of the chapters where 
these are incomplete or false, or where they are in reality 
comments on the Scripture. This amended version, in- 
dorsed by the secretaries, and adopted by the Board of 
Managers, was printed and circulated by them during seven 
years, and was then suppressed. This was done in conse- 
quence of a clamor, raised not merely by the ignorant, but 
in which even Reviews, Ecclesiastical Bodies, and Auxiliary 
Societies did not hesitate to join. I asked one of the gen- 
tlemen, who was a member of the committee, why this was 
done; and he said that it was owing to the fear that, 7f we 
once begin to make corrections tn the Bible, the people might 
lose their faith in it altogether.” 

“No one believes the ‘Nautical Almanac’ an zxzfallible 
book ; but it is such an authority that thousands of vessels 
trust themselves to its calculations, and thousands of lives 
and millions of property are confided to its accuracy.” 

“One whom I knew, one of the best of men, upright 


292 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


and honorable, benevolent and kind, was called an znzjfidel. 
When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Yes, I have thought 
myself so, and for this reason,—when I was young, I heard 
a minister say, taking a Bible in his hand, Everything be- 
tween these lids is the Word of God, and if you do not 
believe it you will be damned.’ I said, ‘ If this is Christian- 
ity, 1 must be an infidel.” But now I have changed my 
mind. I do not think that Christianity requires me to 
believe everything in the Bible, and so I can gladly be a 
Christian.’ ” 


(h) How the Eclectism of Christianity renders ut a World. 
Religion. 


The essential teachings of Christianity and its superiority, 
as an Eclectic or World-Religion, are well stated in a recent 
personal experience of a very learned Hindoo priest or 
Brahmin who, after prolonged and exhaustive studies in 
Comparative Religions, accepts Christianity in its rational 
(that is non-ritualistic and non-dogmatic) sense. 

Christianity, as an intelligent, independent, unprejudiced, 
and unpartisan Seeker of Truth finds it is, briefly, as follows: 

“ T was of areligious temperament from my boyhood days. 
While a college student I had little time for religious study, 
but on entering public life I made the study of comparative 
religions a specialty. 

“ The motive back of these investigations was a conscious- 
ness of the sinful condition of man. I sought an efficient 
means to rid me of this consciousness and afford peace of 
mind. The whole thing was ethical. 

“T had had opportunities to study the Bible in the mission 
school when I was a pupil there, but I was notas yet favorably 
disposed toward the Christian Religion. Consequently I 
began a scientific study of the Hindoo religion—that is, 
going back to the Sanskrit Scriptures. A deep study of 
these books revealed the fact that the method of salvation 
has not always been of one single kind. Various methods 
have been prescribed in various portions of the Hindoo 
Scriptures. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 293 


a 


‘The ritualistic form made it entirely subservient to the 
performance of rites and ceremonies. Personal conduct is 
not taken into consideration. The philosophical Hindooism 
has also various standpoints from which salvation is viewed. 
The most popular form is Yogi-ism, or contemplation. 

“The next most popular is Vedantism, or pantheism. In 
this form of Hindooism the man feels that he is a part and 
parcel of the universal spirit, and that this feeling is the 
summum bonum of his existence, this knowledge making 
him divine. Such philosophical thought is no doubt inter- 
esting to a contemplative mind. But I could not regard 
these solutions of the problem of the future life as satisfac- 
tory and practical. I was bound to right them, for India 
has had men of contemplation from time immemorial, yet 
no progress has been made toward the improvement of man- 
kind. So with regard to the ritualistic form of worship. 
Their rites and ceremonies are all symbolical. They are 
visionary. Observance of them makes religion appear likea 
pantomime. Consequently I found the system unsatisfac- 
tory. 

“Next I made a study of Buddhism. The ethical element 
of Gautama’s teaching is of asuperior order. But the method 
of salvation is tedious and pessimistic, because man is made 
the saviour of himself. By a process of reincarnation, num- 
bering probably a million births or more, he is to emancipate 
himself. The great defect of Buddhism is that no prominence 
2s given to the existence of God and the truth of His father- 
hood. No ideal of life is to be seen. The whole thing is a 
tiresome plodding of the way from birth to death over and 
over again. 

‘““Next I was led to the study of Christianity. The first 
thing I was struck with was the character of Jesus. That 
character of his has enabled me to make a study of his re- 
ligion. The secret of the power of that religion consists in 
the fact that it fulfils the requirements of man’s weakness— 
tt offers God as a sympathetic father ; tt embraces the whole 
world as members of one human family, and the union amongst 
the members of this family ts love. The religion makes pro- 


2904 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


viston for the tmprovement of the mental and spiritual man. 
It offers eternal hope for his regeneration, and for enjoying 
the highest holy bliss in future. It teaches faith in man and 
God. And it proves the truth of all this by the character of 
Jesus. 

“It is this that presented itself with the greatest force in 
my life and made me embrace Christianity.” 


(2) A Parable of Christianity as the Religion of Eclectictsm. 
[From a Sermon by a recent Rector of St. Fames’ Chapel, London, now a 
Dissenting Clergyman of England. | 

“Tt happened, once on a time, as men went to and fro in 
the world who were interested in the arts, that they discov- 
ered, at different periods, and hidden away in many coun- 
tries, portions, it seemed, of exquisite statues—a foot, an 
arm, a torso, a broken hand. Something superb in each of 
these made men recognize them at once as perfect. ach 
nation cherished its separate piece as an ideal of art, each 
drifted into a thousand suspicions as to the author and his 
intention; each completed the statue from conjecture ac- 
cording to their own ability. At last, owing to the decay 
of the nations, and to the rise of one upon their ruins, all 
the several pieces were collected in one museum. They were 
still considered as belonging to separate nations and periods of 
art. Dissertations were written and lectures were delivered 
upon them; the ideal completions which each nation had 
made of its several pieces were placed beside them, and the 
completions studied with infinite criticism. 

““One day, however, when the artist-world were collected 
in the museum, a man whom no one knew, entered, and 
slowly went from room to room examining the famous 
remnants one after another, but passing by the completions 
of each with some indifference. At last he approached the 
sroup of artists: ‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘I have examined your 
famous pieces of sculpture, and their ideal restorations. 
The restorations are interesting as examples of art at differ- 
ent periods, dut worthless as a foundation for any true ideal. 
But, did it never strike you that all your pieces are of the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 295 
Se te eee ies ey etre SOE MARES Wd ND eT PEND. ery cata 
same time and by the same hand, and that you have but to 
bring them together out of their several rooms and untte them? 
Your ideal statue is among you, and you know it not.’ 
When he had thus spoken, many laughed and some mocked, 
but a few were found to listen; the greater part, however, 
as the stranger grew more earnest, became indignant—for 
what would become of their art theories if he were right ?— 
and drove him out of the museum with ignominy. But the 
few sought him out, and it is said that they entered the 
building by night and brought together the remnants, the 
stranger superintending, and found it even as he had said. 
They saw the statue grow, piece by piece, into unity, but at 
the end the head was wanting. A great cry of pity arose— 
‘What !’ they wept, ‘ shall we never see the ideal realized!’ 
But the stranger, as they wept, drew from beneath his cloak 
the head, and crowned the statue with completeness. And 
as he did so, he passed away and was seen no more. But the 
perfect thing remained—the pure ideal of divine art, fully 
realized at last. Then those few gave up their theories, and 
their delight in the separate remnants and their restorations, 
and went abroad, taking with them the perfect thing, to 
preach a new kingdom of art; and when men asked them 
to define and theorize art, they stept aside, and unveiling the 
statue, said, ‘Look and see; thisis Art. If you can receive 
it, you too will become artists. This is all our definition, 
this is all our theory.’ And some believed and others did 
not, but slowly the new ideal won its way, till it grew to be 
the rule and the model of the greater part of the artist- 
world. 

‘““Of what took place at the museum when the mockers 
found their pieces gone—of how they fought against the 
possessors of the statue, and denied that it had anything 
to do with their lost remnants; of how they made coun- 
terfeits of these remnants, and clung to their ancient res- 
torations as the true ideals—I need not tell; nor yet of a 
more pitiable thing—of how in aftertimes the followers of 
the true tdeal made false copies of it, modifying it, and tntro- 
ducing their own ideas tnto it, and held up these, and not the 


296 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


perfect statue, for the imitation and aspiration of the world 
of art. Are not these things written in history? But again 
and again, the one effort of all true artists since has been to 
bring back men to the contemplation of that single figure. 

“This parable illustrates Christianity. Zhe scattered truths 
of the world were truths from God. Men wove diverse re- 
ligions round the diverse truths. At last the Christ came, 
and did not reject, but brought together in himself, the pre- 
vious truths—made them for the first time fit into one an- 
other, sothat each tookitsplace. . . . Thisisthat which 
the Christ did for us. We have granted that many truths 
which he declared afresh existed before his time; but they 
were isolated, their mutual connection was not perceived. 
Hence they had no regenerative power, but little practical 
power. Great men worked at them, carried them out into 
separate philosophies, but they never got any wide popular 
influence, and they were finally buried under a weight of 
conjectures and conceits. The first enthusiasm they had 
created died away—nor, indeed, did they ever produce that 
peculiar characteristic of Christianity, az active and unceas- 
ing propagandism. 

“But under the transforming hand of the Christ, these 
truths came together into a perfect whole. The truth of 
doing good for good’s sake, became in harmony with the 
truth of doing good for the sake of immortal life. They had 
formerly clashed, and there are persons yet who think they 
clash. The truth that the soul is to be absorbed in God 
united itself with the truth of the distinct personality of the 
soul, and in uniting, the one lost its pantheism and the other 
its isolated self-dependence. The truth that men lived by 
faith, and the apparently opposed truth that they lived by 
works, found in the love which the Christ awoke to himself a 
point where they mingled into one. Vo truth was left to 
sound tts note alone, but all together harmonized arose into 


That undisturbed song of pure concent 
Aye sung before the sapphire colored throe. 


If this be true, it forms one of the distinctive qualities of 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 297 


Christianity. No heathen philosophy had done it, no 
heathen religion had attempted it. In fact, they had not 
the materials. No Jewish Doctors had succeeded in it, 
though they had attempted it. One or two may have had, 
as had the heathen, glimpses of it—all had a vague suspi- 
cion of it; but it still remained a vision till the Christ came 
and supplied the magic word which gave the spiritual affinity 
of all truths space and power to act. 

“Immediately on coming into harmony, they became in- 
spiring principles in men and instruments powerful for 
practical work. They took new and vigorous developments 
—as, for example, the truth of immortality. The men who 
possessed them were conscious of power, and they labored 
as if they were secure of victory. They did not mind stating 
apparently opposed truths ; they knew that they could give 
to men a higher truth, in which the contradictories became two 
sides of the same truth. And when the glorious oratorio of 
Christian truth was sung, with parts for every nation, and 
the chorus rose in which the most diverse found themselves 
in harmony, men said, This is unique in the world’s history. 
Heathenism, philosophies, Oriental thought, Hebraism, 
Judaism, have never done work like this. 

“But what was the crowning truth which completed the 
ideal statue ?—what was the magic word which set separated 
truths flowing together ?—what was the directing element 
which harmonized the varied songs of truth into a whole? 
It was the doctrine, or rather the fact, of the Divine Man; 
the truth of the Word made flesh, the fact that God had en- 
tered into Man, had revealed the Divinity of Man, the 
Flumanity of God. This is the central truth of the world. 
This is the truth without which all other truths fall back 
into their isolation. This is the key to all the mysteries of 
lifes) 

LXXXII.—MYSTERY OF THE DIVINE IN THE HUMAN— 
OR, JESUS THE CHRIST AS ‘‘ GOD MANIFEST 
IN THE FLESH.”’ 

The light of day which fills any room is the Sun (shining 

there). But countless myriads of rooms so filled would not 


298 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


begin to compass the Sun. So (as Tertullian, the Great 
father of the Church, plainly taught) ‘‘ God was in Jesus the 
Christ” (as likewise in “every man that cometh into the 
world ”’),—“ filling him with all the fulness,” so that he was 
verily “God manifest.” But countless myriads of Christs 
so “filled with all the fulness of God” would not begin to 
compass the Deity. 

Tertullian expressed the common conception of the second 
century with reference to the Divine in the Human as follows: 

“When we see sunlight on the floor of a room we say it 
is the sun shining there; but if we wish to distinguish be- 
tween the light in the room and the far-away orb of day from 
which it comes, we must call the former sundeam, and only 
the latter the suz. Likewise we may call the spirit in the 
Christ divine but must distinguish between tt and the Lord of 
all, whence it came ; for as no room can contain all the light 
of day, neither can any soul compass all the spirit of God.” 
This is the truly Christian view,—“ there was in the Christ 
as much of the spirit of God as can be compassed by a hving 
soul, as much of the eternal as can be contained in the tem- 
poral, as much of the immortal as can be joined to the mortal, 
as much of the heavenly as can be brought to our earthly 
abode, as much of the Divine spirit as can dwell within the 
limits of flesh and blood; while over and above this is the 
tmmeasurable fulness (of which al souls do or may partake) 
of ‘the Most High, who inhabiteth eternity,’ and who 
‘weaveth the ages as a garment upon a loom.’ ”’ 

The much-debated doctrine of the Kenosis or se/fempty- 
ing of Jesus the Christ is here made simple and plain. He 
“emptied himself” completely of Self (which is Selfishness) 
in order that he might be filled completely with God. So it 
became literally true that “in him dwelt the fulness of God 
(the Godhead) bodily,” Or, using another figure, “ The 
Word” (also called Light and Life), which “ was God,” in 
Jesus the Christ ‘became flesh.” Darkness and Death 
(which are Selfishness and its outgrowing Sin) were enxtzrely 
driven out: in their place came pouring in Light and 
Life (which “was God”), and so entzrely filled him with the 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 299 


Divine Fulness that “in him was no Darkness (or Death) at 
all.” This Light (and Life) which was in him and filled him 
with allits fulness is that “true Light which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world”: zz zs also “ the Life” of 
men. 

So that the process of decoming Christians is also simple 
and plain. It is to drive out Darkness and Death (Selfish- 
ness and its outgrowing Sin) so that Light and Life (God) 
may become flesh and dwell zz us “ full of grace and truth.” 

The more complete the se/femptying the greater will be 
the fulness of God zz us. When there is left in us “no 
darkness at all” (that is no Selfishness at all) then shall we 
be ¢rue Christians—filled with that same Light (and Life) 
which was in Jesus the Christ. ‘ Of His fulness have all we 
received, and grace for grace.” 

“ Let this mind be in you, which was also in Fesus the 
Christ ; who, though made in the image of God (as likewise 
are you and all) deemed it not a thing to be grasped at to 
be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation 
(emptied himself) and took upon him the station of a ser- 
vant and shared the common lot of men: and becoming the 
benefactor of man, he humbled himself and was obedient unto 
death, even the (most shameful) death of the cross. Where- 
fore God also hath highly exalted him,and given him a name 
which is above every other name.” 

Again let the Apostle’s words of exhortation to us and to 
all be repeated: “ Let zizs mind (complete se/femptying) be 
in you, which was also in Jesus the Christ.” So will be ex- 
perienced the mystery of the Divine in the Human; so shall 
every man come to be, each tn his own measure, “God mani- 
fest in the flesh.” 


This simple teaching of the Divine in the Human, or of 
God Manifest in the Flesh, was the fundamental teaching of 
the New Testament and of the Primitive Church. It may 
be called the Sum and Substance of the Gospel—the Good- 
News of the Fatherhood of God and the Sonship of Man 


300 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


through the Indwelling Spirit. Of all the doctrines which 
now make up the essential orthodoxy of Romanism and of 
Protestantism this is the only one distinctly held and taught 
in the Church of the first three centuries. This is well shown 
by a scholarly Divinity School Professor of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in the well-known volume “ Continuity of 
Christian Thought ” (pages Ig, 20): 

“None of the individual doctrines or tenets, which have 
so long been the objects of dislike and animadversion to the 
modern theological mind, formed any constituent part of 
the Greek theology” (or theology of the Early Christian 
Church). “The tenets of original sin and total depravity, 
as expounded by Augustine and received by the Protestant 
churches from the Latin Church, the guilt of infants, the 
absolute necessity of baptism in order to salvation, the 
denial of the freedom of the will, the doctrine of election, 
the idea of schism in the Divine nature which required a 
satisfaction to retributive justice before love could grant 
forgiveness, the atonement as a principle of equivalence by 
which the sufferings of Christ were weighed in a balance 
against the endless sufferings of the race, the notion that 
revelation is confined within the Book, guaranteed by the 
inspiration of the letter or dy a line of priestly curators in 
apostolic descent, the necessity of miracles as the strongest 
evidences of the truth of a revealed religion, the doctrine of 
sacramental grace and priestly mediation, the zdea of the 
Church as identical with some particular form of ecclestastical 
organization,—these and other tenets which have formed 
the gist of modern religious controversy find no place in the 
Greek theology and are irreconcilable with tts spirit.” This 
statement is the verdict of all the scholarship of Christendom 
which is free from sectartan control. 

After the first three centuries the simple teachings of the 
Gospel were not so prominent as questions over which theo- 
logians disputed. ‘‘ Down through the debates of Nicza, 
down through the doctrinal discussions of Augustine, down 
through the disputes of the Middle Age, down through the 
time of Calvin, of the Thirty-nine Articles, and of the West- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 301 


minster Assembly, and through all the endless controversies 
of the Christian centuries,—through all this we hear very 
little of the Gospel of Love, very little of the Fatherhood 
of God, very little of the Brotherhood of Man, very little of 
the Glad-Tidings of God in man which Jesus proclaimed to 
the world. All this, the heart of the primitive Christian 
faith, is subordinated to scholastic questions, is lost to view 
in the dust and noise of theologic dispute. ‘i 

“The preachers of ‘ orthodoxy,’ in upholding ner posi- 
tion, do not go back to the fountain-head of Christianity, 
but to someone or something later,—to the Westminster 
Catechisms, or to the Thirty-nine Articles, or to the Augs- 
burg Confession ; and these again go back to Calvin or some 
other similar authority, and he to Augustine, who in turn 
went to the world of sin around him, and the sin which had 
been in his own heart before he became a Christian; a// 
going back to some man, or council, or condition of things, tn- 
stead of to the Gospel of Love, the Glad-Tidings as Fesus pro- 
claimed them.” 

To do this is to forfeit the title of being a follower of 
Jesus and the claim of being a Christian zz the New Testa- 
ment and Apostolic sense. Romanist, Protestant, Church- 
man, Papist; follower of Athanasius, of Augustine, of 
Luther, of Calvin, or whatever else they may be ;—such as 
these are not ¢ruly Christian or truly followers of Jesus the 
Christ. 


LXXXIl.—" THAT YE MIGHT BE FILLED WITH ALL THE FULNESS 
OF GOD.”’ 


(See pages 297-3701) 


One of the oldest and most common prayers of that most 
ancient of all sacred books, the Rig-Veda, is: “ Make me to 
be emptied of myself and possessed of God,” i.e., filled with 
all the fulness of God :—an expression, simply, of that deep- 
felt dependence on the Deity which leads to complete surren- 
der of selfishness or self. In New Testament language, “ Self- 


302 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


denial and the Cross,” crucifixion-of-self, self-death—that 
henceforth “ your life may be hid, as was the Christ’s, in God. 
. I live, yet not I, but Christ (¢xcarnate-God) liveth 
in me. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead in- 
deed unto sin (self or selfishness) but alive unto God.” 
Traditionalism, handing down all kinds of un-Scriptural 
teachings from the “ Fathers of the Church,” has persistently 
neglected this, their main and plainest teaching, which was 
also the very heart of the Gospel, vzz.,God zz Man. For in- 
stance, open the “Confessions of Augustine,” and on the 
first pages find as follows*: 


* Though rightly apprehending the Gospel on this point, as on many others, 
yet by no means is Augustine quoted as authority upon any matter of his own 
dogmatic reasoning. By his own confessions he lived a life of unbridled sensu. 
ality—from his fifteenth to his thirty-third year, depending meanwhile for 
pecuniary support largely upon the self-sacrificing devotions of his mother and, 
later, upon the patronage of those Manicheans whom finally he deserted, 
When he found that all the avenues to bread and fame began to open only from 
inside the now rich and popular Church of Rome, then, with health broken 
as the natural result of his prolonged immoralities, he reformed his life and 
entered upon his career as priest and bishop, and also as the chief expounder 
and defender of the Traditional Faith. 

Such a career of sensuousness extending uninterruptedly over a period of 
nearly twenty years, could not fail to permanently unhinge or throw out of 
balance the reasoning powers, at any period of life; but inevitably and hope- 
lessly so when begun at the tender age of fourteen years. However pious and 
sincere the remnant of his life, and however eloquent and true his many é¢x- 
positions of the simple and self-evident teachings of the Bible, the Sins of 
his Youth could not fail to result in a Harvest of rational as well as of physical 
decay; so that to name him as ‘‘authority’? upon any matter of his own 
dogmatic reasoning—in these days of enlightenment as to the permanent men. 
tal results of early and prolonged physical dissipations—would be folly indeed. 

‘“Be not deceived : God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap.” 

Let reformed drunkards, reformed sensualists, or reformed self-abusers of 
any sort do all the good they can in the world ; let them also have due encour- 
agement and due praise. But suchas these have never yet been God’s “‘ chosen 
vessels” for the communication of highest Truth or highest Wisdom of any sort 
to mankind. Only from well-tuned harps—‘‘ spirits of Just Men made per- 
fect ”—has ever yet sounded either the Music of Heaven or the Music of the 
Spheres. In religion, in science, in every highest department of Thought—no 
strained, much less broken, strings can ever produce that Harmony which alone 
is worthy to be called Authoritative Truth. God’s recognized Prophets, in all 
History and Literature, have been sound minds in sound bodies who could 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 303 


‘“What room is there within me, whither my God can come 
into me? whither can God come into me, God who made 
heaven and earth? is there, indeed, O Lord my God, aught 
in me that can contain Thee? do then heaven and earth, 
which Thou hast made, and wherein Thou hast made me, 
contain Thee? or, because nothing which exists could exist 
without Thee, doth therefore whatever exists contain Thee ? 
Since, then, I too exist, why do I seek that Thou shouldest 
enter into me, who were not, wert Thou not in me ? ; 

I could not be, then, O my God, could not be at all, wert T. wae 
notin me. . . . Evenso, Lord, even so.. Whence canst 
Thou enter into me? for whither can I go beyond heaven 
and earth, that thence my God should come into me, who 
hath said, J fill the heaven and the earth. . . . But Thou 
who fillest all things, fillest Thou them with Thy whole self ? 
or, since all things cannot contain Thee wholly, do they con- 
tain part of Thee? and all at once the same part? or each zts 
own part, the greater more, the smaller less? And is, then, 
one part of Thee greater, another less? or, art Thou wholly 
every where, while nothing contains Thee wholly ? 

Oh! that Thou wouldest enter into my heart, and inebriate 
it, that I may forget my ills, and embrace Thee, my sole 
good? . . . Narrow ts the mansion of my soul, enlarge 
Thou tt, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair 
Thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; 
I confess and know it. But who shall cleanse it? Cleanse 
Thou me from secret faults.” 

boldly say, ‘‘ All these have I kept from my youth up.”—‘‘ Which of you con- 
victeth me of (self-degrading) sin?”’—‘‘ I have lived in all good conscience be- 
fore God until this day.”” Only in proportion as this could be truthfully said 
has any one, ov any loftiest subject, been able to teach ‘‘ as one having authority, 


and not as the scribes.’”? And so must it continue to be—‘‘ world without end, 
Amen.” 


304 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
Sa NO OES ek Rae ee te ee 
LXXXIV.—ILLUSTRATIVE SELECTIONS FROM RECENT 
AUTHORS. 


[ he longer selections are here used by special permission. In all the selections 
of this volume, to especially mark the more illustrative portions, italics have been 
freely used. | 


“ Our present gratitude, insures the future's good ; 
And from the things we see, we trust the things to be. 


“ Others shall sing the song, others shall right the wrong ; 
finish what we begin, and all we fail of, win. 


“ What matter, we or they? Our, or some other aay ? 
The right word shall be said, and life be sweeter made. 


“ Hail to the coming singers ! Hail to the brave light-bringers ! 
Forward we reach, and share, all that they sing, or dare. 


“ The airs of Heaven blow o'er us, a glory shines before us, 
Of what mankind shall be—pure, generous, brave, and free. 


“ Ring, bells, in unreared steeples, the joy of new-born peoples ! 
Sound, trumpets, far-off blown! Your triumphs are our own.” 


CHRISTIANITY IS LIKE THE SEA ‘‘ INTO WHICH ALL RIVERS 
RUN, AND YET IT IS NOT FULL.”’ 


“ A sacred ark, which from the deeps 
Garners the life for worlds to be, 
And with its precious burden sweeps 
Adown times dark, mysterious sea.” 


“ The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, 

Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away : 
But fixed Thy word, Thy saving power rematns : 
Thy realm forever lasts, Thine own Messiah reigns.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 305 
al i al ar ibaa a ell ie IT 
(@) OPTIMISTIC FOREGLEAMS. 


[Prophetic Utterances of Many Brave and Hopeful Votces.| 


“TI tell you it has been a pretty serious thing to try to be 
a minister in this past quarter of a century! With every 
question reopened all about us; with the very foundations 
of Religion threatened ; with Science inviting men into its 
brilliant paths as the only way to any certain truth; hardly 
able to say a prayer without some one challenging it as an 
obsolete formality,—do you wonder if we have often been 
straggling in our choice of subjects, uncertain and defensive 
in our tone, and sometimes voicing more of doubt than 
faith? But if what I have said be true,—and it is true, 
those days are passing. The foundations have been looked to, 
and they remain. Much dead wood has been cut away; but 
out of the storm and the testing stands out in stronger reality 
than ever the grand realities of Religion, with the Gospel of 
the Christ’s Life and Word as their divinest expression, the 
one sure, unchanging rest for the world’s weary and unstable 
Lifes 


“ There ’s new life in the seed : sow and believe! 
Clearer dew did not glisten round Adam and Eve; 
Never bluer heavens nor greener sod 
Since the round world rolled from the hand of God.” 


“So we may go forward in working for them, and spread- 
ing them, and building them up in every way we can. We 
may not see them perfectly—who can? We are but seekers 
still. But at least we have got clear from the obscuring dog- 
mas which have so long shut out the brightest light of God. 
We look toward God, toward the Christ, and toward the 
solemn life to come, not setting up any small conditions of 
what men must believe about them, but simply sure that 
there is light, and that to the pure in heart and those who 
keep their faces towards it, the light shall grow more and 
more.” 


“ Great truths that pitch their shining tents 
Outside our wall; and, though but dimly seen 


306 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


In the gray dawn, they will be manifest 
When the light widens to the perfect day!” 


“In this new and onward movement we shall probably 
pass through the same slow process of transition which has 
marked every moral reform that ever emancipated men from 
bondage and superstition. First, a period of contention and 
persecution; second, a period of gradual and general con- 
version to the new ideas; third, a period when everybody 
will eagerly declare, ‘Why, we always thought so.’ I ven- 
ture to predict that thirty years from now it will be drfficult 
to find among intelligent Protestants any one, in any denomt- 
nation, who will hold the teachings of the old theology which 
are to-day called in question. What is now taught by the 
leaders will then be accepted by the majority. The ‘heresy’ 
of this generation will become the ‘ orthodoxy’ of the next, 
and what is now called zxfidelity will become the accepted 
form of Christianity in the twentieth century. For all this 
let us give thanks. Let us devoutly praise God that it is 
given us to live to witness the wonderful moral transforma- 
tion, the intellectual progress, and theological revolution 
which are now going on.” 


Gospel and Sctence ! 
Fail happy age which joins these twain 
In bond divine,—a wondrous reign. 
The glorious things that are to be, 
Earth's waiting watchers dimly see: 
Pure angels sing, 
And heralds bring, 
Tidings of peace and untty. 


“The evidences of Christianity will continue to be written 
from different points of view, from time to time, as long as 
men question the historical basis of the Christian religion. 
Each new generation must have its new demonstration of 
the reality of the religion of the Christ, because with each 
new generation there comes an accession of knowledge, the 
appearance on the horizon of new facts which compel a change 
of point of view. In our own age, for instance, the scientific 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 307 


movement has brought about something very like a recon- 
struction of the view of the universe. This does not mean 
that all old views are given up: it means that the old truths 
stand in new relations to each other; that prospective and 
relative positions have changed. In one generation human- 
ity on its ceaseless march sees the mountain summits in a 
certain order; fifty years later it has reached another point 
of view, and sees them in a different order. So, from time 
to time, under the compulsion of new knowledge and new 
truths, the old positions must be restated, and the old argu- 
ments reframed or quietly dropped out of sight while new 
arguments take their place.” 


‘“‘ Happiest they of human race 
To whom our God hath granted grace 
To read, to hear, to hope, to pray, 
To lift the latch and force the way.” 


“The only faith that wears well, and holds its color in 
all weathers, is that which is woven of conviction, and set 
with the sharp mordant of experience.” 


“ Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountatn-tops.” 


(4) COURAGE AND HOPE. 


“The daily life of every one of us teems with occasions 
which will try the temper of our courage as searchingly, 
though not as terribly, as battle-field or fire or wreck. For 
we are born into a state of war; with falsehood and disease 
and wrong and misery, in a thousand forms, lying all around 
us, and the voice within calling on us to take our stand as 
men in the eternal battle against these. 

‘And in this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of 
us single-handed against a host of foes, the last requisite for 
a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and man- 
fulness, must be loyalty to truth—the most rare and difficult 
of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in per- 
fection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before usa 
standard of manliness always rising higher and higher. 


308 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


““¢ For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into 
the world, to bear witness to the truth.’ To bear this wit- 
ness against avowed and open enemies is comparatively 
easy. But to bear it against those we love, against those 
whose judgment and opinions we respect, in defence or fur- 
therance of that which approves itself as true to our own 
inmost conscience, this is the last and abiding test of courage 
and of manliness. How natural, nay, how inevitable it is, 
that we should fall into the habit of appreciating and judg- 
ing things mainly by the standards in common use amongst 
those we respect and love. But these very standards are 
apt to break down with us when we are brought face to face 
with some question which takes us ever so little out of our- 
selves and our usual moods. At such times we are driven 
to admit in our hearts that we, and those we respect and 
love, have been looking at and judging things, not truthfully, 
and therefore not courageously and manfully, but convention- 
ally. And then comes one of the most searching of all trials 
of courage and manliness, when men and women are called 
to stand by what approves itself to their consciences as true, 
and to protest for it through evil report and good report, 
against all discouragement and opposition from those they 
love or respect. The sense of antagonism instead of rest, of 
distrust and alienation instead of approval and sympathy, 
which such times bring, is a test which tries the very heart 
and reins, and it is one which meets us at all ages, and in all 
conditions of life. Emerson’s hero is the man who, ‘ taking 
both reputation and life in his hand, will with perfect urban- 
ity dare the gibbet and the mob, by the absolute truth of 
his speech and rectitude of his behavior.’ And, even in 
our peaceful and prosperous England, absolute truth of 
speech and rectitude of behavior will not fail to bring their 
fiery trials, if also in the end their exceeding great rewards.” 

“ These are the living lights, 
That from the Earths green heights 
Shall shine afar : 
’Til all who name the name 
Of freedom, to their flame 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 309 


Come, as the Magi came 
To Bethlehem’s star.” 


“Tt is in truth an ungracious and thankless office to have 
to tell the world what it least wishes to hear. The world 
lives with no end of extravagant outlay, like some luxurious 
lord ; takes and spends so long as there is anything to spend; 
and, whoever ventures to reckon up the cost and call atten- 
tion to the balance, is regarded as an insolent mischief- 
maker. . . . One must not rouse the sleeping lion, unless 
one is ready to fight with him for life and death.” 


“ T’ve struggled day and night against this work. 
I’m worn out trying to shut up my lips. 
’T ts useless! Speak I must: else life ts death.” 


“My heart was hot within me: while I was musing the 
fire burned ; then spoke I with my tongue.” 


‘““To many it is a time of honest difficulty and trouble of 
spirit; they hardly know what to believe or how to guide 
their life; and they feel as if the foundations of faith, hope, 
and duty were giving way. Some say, ‘Let us not ask 
troublesome questions, but hold fast to the faith of our 
fathers. Let us say our prayers and go to sleep; that will 
be safest.’ Some strain their eyes to get a peep into the 
darkness ; some shut their eyes for fear of seeing something, 
or for the sadder fear that there is nothing to be seen ; some 
whistle to keep their courage up; some mock; and some are 
calm enough to look all facts in the face, and to wait patiently 
for more light.” 


“There is wide dissatisfaction with the old way of putting 
things. In one city a prominent man said to me ‘I go to 
the most fashionable and wealthy church. It is filled with 
our most influential people. We go through the motions 
and responses in regular order; but when we get out on the 
sidewalk, gentlemen say to each other, ‘Do you believe 
that?’ ‘No, not a word of it; but ’t is all well enough.’ In 
another city an official member of one of the largest churches 
gives it as his opinion that there is not one well-informed 


310 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
ROUTAN ST RAR GAL Dee ode LENA OG POLI hPL ie AE IEE COO tbe en UR EASES SNA Biv OH) PS aos 


man in the congregation who does not sometimes ask if it 
can be possible the minister expects the people to believe 
what he preaches. Intimations of this kind come from all 
directions. Does it mean that religion ts being outgrown ? 
Or does it mean that what is called religion is under suspicion 
and challenge, because it does not deserve the name ?” 

“Tt is not worth while to waste words on those who treat 
these matters with levity and scoffing; but I only report 
what I know, from wide intercourse, to be true of increasing 
numbers of thoughtful and earnest men and women. 

These honest and intelligent objections to what is called 
religion are really demands for a better article—the very 
thing we want.” 

“And will you not be thankful in return, if it grows clear 
that the faults and deficiencies of religious people,—their 
errors of belief, their blundering methods, their perversities 
of temper, and their shocking crimes against civilization and 
humanity,—are no part of true religion, but are fairly charge- 
able to their want of it? Cant, rant, superstition, bigotry, 
obscurantism, false conservatism, hypocrisy, empty formal- 
ism, priestcraft,—what has true religion to do with these but 
to expel them from the heart of man, and to drive them off 
the face of the earth?” 

“Sweep away all that is irrational in creeds or obstructive 
in churches; make an end of wolfish and sheepish types of 
piety and canting forms of philanthropy ; lead mankind on- 
ward and upward into the full, clear light of reason and the 
large freedom of nature,—and will religion have disappeared ? 
Only as the sun disappears when men come out of caverns 
and cellars, and find the mists of morning swept from the 
wide firmament of blue and gold.” 

“< We are not obliged to chose between a false religion and no 
religion at all; our choice is rather between the /fa/se and 
the true, or between the /ower and the higher,—a difference 
even greater than that between the candle burning at an 
altar and the sun shining in the high heaven. If there be 
indeed a Wise Spirit, working in us and presiding over the 
Church and the world, we shall surely outgrow much that 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 311 


passes for religion, and much that is now covered all over 
with Christian labels; but this advance will be along the line 
of spiritual evolution toward the goal at which Jesus himself 
points when he bids us ‘ be perfect, like the Father.’ ” 


“During the time when an old form of Christian thought 

is slowly passing away, having exhausted all it had to give, 
it repeats again and again with the garrulity of old age the 
phrases which in its youth were the expressions of living 
thought and feeling. They fitted then the wants of men, 
and they were the means by which religious life advanced 
and religious truth developed. But being naturally cast into 
a fixed intellectual system, they remained behind the move- 
ment they began; they made men grow, but men outgrew 
them, for systems become old, but mankind is always young. 
It follows, then, almost of necessity, that when a certain 
point in this progress is reached, there will be a strong reac- 
tion against the old form of Christianity, and the reaction 
will contain the assertion of that which is wanting in the 
dying phase, and a protest against its weakness. 
There will be many who, seeing these garments of Christian- 
ity rotting away, and hearing them declared to be Christ- 
ianity itself, will believe the declaration, and attack not 
only the garments but the living spirit itself which is waiting 
to be reclothed.” 


“It is remarkable that the theological questions which are 
now most widely spoken of are no longer those which pre- 
suppose a general confession of Christianity, but other and 
deeper questions altogether; questions the very discussion 
of which shows how strongly the foundations of the religious 
world are moved. It is now frequently asked whether there 
be a God or not, whether immortality be not a mere idol of 
the imagination. It is plain, when society has got down to 
these root questions, that modern theology zz zts past form 
has no longer the power to do its work, otherwise these 
things would be axioms. It is plain that, if Christianity is 
to keep its ground, it must go through a@ revolutton, and pre- 
sent itself in a xew form to the minds of men.” 


312 RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 


“With a large majority of people, the love of approbation 
and the force of habit are so strong that they prefer peace 
to progress. They go on using customary phrases and 
forms, without thinking much about what their significance 
or influence may be; and all whose mental organization 
leads them to question their import, they brand as heretics.” 


“‘Thus you see that to be called a heretic is at least to be 
put in excellent society ; indeed it is to be given a place in 
the great company of those noble men and women who have 
done the most that ever has been done, in all ages and lands, 
for the advancement, purification and enlightenment of Re- 
ligion in the world. One need not be greatly troubled at 
being a heretic in such distinguished and honored company. 
If a short-sighted to-day stones its prophets, a wiser to- 
morrow comes with reverent tread to build them costly 
tombs.” 

‘Though Truth’s portion be the scaffold, 
And upon the throne be Wrong, 
Yet that scaffold sways the future 
And, behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadows 
Keeping watch above his own.” 


“‘ All this shows that the main concern of us all should be, 
not with the question of what men will think of us, or even 


do unto us, but with the infinitely more important inquiry, 
What is true?” 


“Faith gratefully and reverently acknowledges and uses 
the Past, but she sets her face toward the Future. . . . The 
outward form of truths held sacred by good men is destined 
to be remodelled by the progress of knowledge; yet in their 
deeper essence there is a spzrz¢ which will live more energet- 
ically with the development of all that is most precious and 
glorious in man.”’ 


‘“The old in Religion dies out,—the old error, the old dis- 
pensation, the old superstition; but not the old Religion. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 313 


This is for ever new and for ever fresh. For this there is no 
decline, no decay; because it is the life of God in the soul.” 

“Tt isa melancholy fact that some earnest souls, edu- 
cated in other forms of faith, have been attracted by our 
theories only to be repelled by our practices. That pure 
and enlightened Hindu, Rammohun Roy, became in love 
with the teachings of Jesus. He went to England, expect- 
ing to find there a Christain community living together like 
a band of brothers. He found haughtiness in one class, ser- 
vility in another; super-abounding wealth on one side, rags 
and starvation on the other; stately cathedrals and pom- 
pous ritual, and the worship of God made a matter of bar- 
gain and sale. And he whose sensitive, truth-seeking soul 
had been pained by missionaries calling him ‘a heathen,’ 
died sad and disheartened because he could not find his ideal 
of a Christian.” 


“ Milan cathedral, lifting its thousand snow-white images 
of saints into the clear blue of heaven, is typical of that Ec- 
lectic Church of the Future which shall gather forms of holy 
aspirations from all ages and nations, and set them on high 
in their immortal beauty, with the broad sunlight of heaven 
to glorify them all.” 

“Religion is a universal instinct of the human soul; and 
the amount of it will never be diminished in the world. Its 
forms will change, but its essence never. And the changes 
produced by the inevitable growth of human souls will be 
slow and imperceptible in process, as have been the mighty 
changes in the physical world.” 


“To speak truly, there never has been in the world but 
one Religion; which is the aspiration of man toward the 
Infinite. This Religion—varied and developed in innumer- 
able ways, and gradually attaining to an elevated point of 
moral purity—has often been perverted and employed in 
the service of the most brutal ignorance, or the most refined 
perverseness; but, sooner or later, it always extricates itself 
from what is foreign, and resumes its upward march toward 
the Ideal; toward Perfection.’’ 


314 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


“Let us accept different forms of Religion among men as 
we accept different languages, wherein there is still one 
human nature expressed. Every genius has most power in 
his own language, and every heart in its own Religion.” 


“All souls that struggle and aspire, 
ALL hearts of prayer, by Thee are lit ; 
And, dim or clear, Thy tongues of fire 
On dusky tribes and centuries sit.” 


“Tt is high time to say frankly, The Bzble ts not religion ; 
the Church 1s not religion ; netther ts any ceremony or sacra- 
ment or doctrinal belief. Let these be valued according to 
their reasonable uses. Let them stand or fall on their 
merits, as disclosed by experience and by free and fair inquiry. 
About all these matters there are many open questions, and 
there will be honest differences. But whatever may be our 
conclusions or our non-conclusions of such questions, the 
foundations of faith and of reason need not be disturbed. 
Religion is life; and life, which is the true seat of God’s 
kingdom, is within. O friend, it is within you.” 

‘““We must cease to disparage and darken ‘the light that 
lighteth every man.’ We must appeal with more confidence 
to the native instincts of the soul. We must recognize and 
honor ¢he divine in the human.” 

“The advancing race will surely have a religion; dut 7¢ 
will not be built of dream-stuff; for man will be mastered by 
reality. It will not be something external, something which 
he ‘gets,’ and puts on; it will be Ze ztself, his own life,— 
the health and completeness of his being, the rational action 
of his faculties, and wise ordering of his conduct and rela- 
tions. What more can we need? What less will meet our 
need? But is not this the essence and outcome of Christ- 
ianity, if we go to the heart of it?” 

“We want a religion for common uses, and for home con- 
sumption. Pure air and wholesome food will yet be sacra- 
mental; cleanliness will be baptismal; an honest day’s work 
will be an acceptable sacrifice; our breath will be prayer, 
and our play will be innocent; our very flesh will be sweet, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 315 


healed of the old disorders of the ages. Then churches will 
be as households, and households as churches; there will be 
seven holy days in every week. ‘This is the covenant that 
I will make with them in those days, saith the Lord: I will 
put my law in their minds, and write it in their hearts; and 
their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.’ ” 

“ Good-by, then, to confusing and misleading echoes of 
the Voice which forever speaks! Good-by to the wornout 
costumes of dead generations! Good-by to tiresome routine 
and cumbrous ceremonial! Let us tenderly lay aside the 
dear old copy-books wherein we have scrawled and mis- 
spelled the holy words of faith and salvation. All honor to 
the monuments and mile-stones which mark the majestic 
march of God in history ; but our faces are to the future. 
We do not desert the heavenly Leader; we move at his 
orders, toward new and grander victories. 

Poor, rich human heart! say good-by also es folly and 
sin; to irreverent self-will and silly conceit ; to worldliness, 
animalism, and torpid indifference; to Wnoreenedy creed 
and ill-will; to profane uses of the day and night. Learn 
the truth as it is in Jesus: ‘that ye put off the old man 
with his deeds, which are corrupt according to the deceitful 
lusts, and that ye put on the new man, fashioned on the 
divine pattern, in righteousness and true holiness. Go forth 
to the life of faith, which is the life of fazthfulness / and to 
the service of man, which is the true service of God. 

O Spirit Eternal, for thy gift of life we forsake all else ie 


“ Naught shall prevail against us nor disturb 
Our cheerful faith—that all which we behold 
Ts full of blessings.” 


‘* For the Great Shepherd reigns, 
And His unsuffering Kingdom yet will come,’ 


“Christianity resembles a railway whose track is et 
marked out. What abysses will still require to be filled in 
or bridged over, what mountains to be tunnelled, how many 
a year will elapse, ere the train full of eager travellers, will 


316 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


swiftly and comfortably be borne along and onwards! 
Nevertheless, we can see the direction it will take: thither 
it shall and must go, where the flags are fluttering joyfully 
in the breeze. Yes, joyfully, in the purest, most exalted, 
spiritual delight.” 


“The book of Inspiration closed? Nay; it never can be 
closed, that Infinite Volume! A// flows,said the Greek; but 
who shall discover the fount of ¢A#zs Sacred Nile? ’T is an 
eternal deep and everlasting flux, older than any outward 
thing.” 

“Christianity is an ever-flowing ever-changing, ever-fresh 
revelation—not a rigid deposit, or a limited, definable faith 
once delivered.” 


“Christianity is not a fixture but a flow: in Goethe’s 
phrase, a change-continuance, a river of God: full of water; 
But no two persons, far less generations, bathe in or drink 
from the same stream. The column of smoke from the 
chimney, or vapor from the hill, or whirl of powdery snow I 
saw on an Alpine peak, in the Austrian Tyrol, (shifting each 
moment its particles while retaining its shape) is a faint type 
of this perpetual dissolving of texts ever interpreted and ap- 
plied anew, and modified past calculation by the atmosphere 
of the time, which Greek Church or Romanish cannot with- 
stand.” 

“But why lament the change? It is a transfiguration 
more glorious than amazed Peter and James and John. 
‘And they knew him and he vanished out of their sight.’ 
When he retired he was revealed. His going was his coming 
again we wait for still.” 


“ Beneath the quietude a tempest is at work. The time 
comes, when a man knows that if he is to be worth any- 
thing, he must be true, he must get rid of all conventional 
beliefs and understand what he means and on what he can 
rest. The old forms of his thought are exhausted; the old 
religion of his childhood has no words for him; the very en- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, als 


thusiasms of his youth he finds but poor images of the 
unreached ideals which cry aloud within him. By many im- 
pulses and events, by loves, sorrows, hates; by clashing 
with the world, by unexpected agonies in his own heart; by 
the weaving and unweaving of life—by the direct speech of 
God—the elements of a new being have gradually collected 
beneath the crust of the old. New ideas, new points of view, 
new perceptions of the world around, new phases of old 
problems, have gradually accumulated till the ancient forms 
are no longer able to bearthe pressure. The fulness of time 
has come; a revolution ts necessary. : 

It is sore work when that day arrives, and men are often 
so tired then that it seems unfair that all the inner life should 
be again disturbed, and that, not as before on the surface, 
but down to and throughout the very depths of being. Buz 
at ts at the peril of our worthiness that we refuse its call, and 
hush its elements into a false peace; we must go through 
with it.” 

“* The stone becomes a plant; the-plant a beast ; 
The beast a man ; the man becomes a god :’ 
Strange words that hold the mystery of life ; 
That point the path which none may leave untrod. 


“* From beast to man’; a long and devious path, 
Which no man living but hath passed along ; 
No stone, nor plant, nor beast, but hath to tread ; 
By law which may nor work nor suffer wrong. 


““The man becomes a god.’ The lofty goal 
Is ours, but only at a mighty price ; 
No moment's zeal prevails, no vague desire, 
No deity that plays with loaded dice. 


“Think ye that death hath power to change the soul? 
That yon fierce ruffian, lurking for his prey, 
May throw the gates of Heaven ope for one 
Whose feet have barely touched the ‘narrow way’? 


“ Through many lives we learn ; for Karma rules, 
The mighty law that ever governs well. 


318 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


‘ As we have sown, we reap,’ our ev'ry deed 
Contributes to make life a heaven or hell. 


“ Seek not to palter with eternal right. 
The rougher path leads quicklier to the goal. 
The intermediate steps must needs be trod, 
£’en to completion, by the struggling soul. 


“ Life-giver to the universe and us, 
Raise from the true sun’s face its gleaming veil ; 
While to thy sacred seat we journey, grant 
Of duty fully done we may not fail.” 


‘“We have heard much, in religious teaching, of saving 
souls, but a far more important thought is, that life is the 
field in which souls are practically being developed out of the 
germs of a soul which every human being has at birth. Life 
is not altogether a summer’s holiday, in which we have only 
to enjoy; it is also stern, hard, capricious, full of terrors and 
pains, baffling and disappointing us ofttimes up to our dying 
hour. So it must be that if the world has God in it, the so- 
called hard and bad things are indispensable to making us 
moral and spiritual beings ; that is, it is the combating just 
these disagreeable things which imparts to souls some of their 
finest fibre and quality. 

Wherever we are faithfully and earnestly trying to do our 
best with life, keeping heart amid discouragements, looking 
ever for the bright sky behind the cloud,—we are making 
souls fit for advancement in the Father’s realm of service. 
Let us be sure there will be no failure to make a soul when 
we believe that we have a soul in germ, and do our part to 
unfold 7t as God shows us what we ought to do.” 


‘““ His teachers held that what they had to give, demanded 
life’s devotion ; that a man should humble himself and put 
away all other aims and thoughts, for the sake of those dim 
written pages; not that the book should serve the man, who 
can never fitly use it unless he already stands upright, as 
one who hungers and thirsts to be pure. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 319 


Whoever enters, even a little way, into that sacred land, 
will carry with him its glamour of golden light—a haunting 
presence that will outlast life itself; and will lead him back 
and back to the same fountains of joy until the end.” 


“ Drop Thy still dews of quietness, 
"Til all our strivings cease ; 
Take from our souls the strain and stress, 
And let our ordered lives confess 
The beauty of Thy peace.” 


“Then speaks the soul of the pure man, asking: ‘ What 
maiden art thou whom I have seen here as the fairest of 
maidens in body ?’ 

“Then replies to him zs own law: ‘1 am, thy good 
thoughts, words, and works: thy good law, the own law of 
thine own body, which would be in reference to thee like in 
greatness, goodness, and beauty, sweet-smelling, victorious, 
harmless, as thou appearest to me. Thou art like me, O 
well-speaking, well-thinking, well-acting man, devoted to the 
good law; so in greatness, goodness, and beauty do I appear 
to thee.’ 

Then the good deeds are enumerated and the soul led into 
Paradise.” 


“ Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead ; 
forget tt tn love's service, and the debt 
Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget ; 
fleaven’s gate ts shut to him who comes alone ; 
Save thou a soul, and tt shall save thy own !”’ 


So live that when thou art summoned hence this may be, 
from many a loving heart, thy truthful tribute :—“ He has 
gone to Heaven! How glad the angels will be!” 


“The world has grown. It is ceasing to be the battle- 
ground of the Creeds, which are slowly becoming /zmes, not 
walls. Ugly hatreds and prejudices still are held, but the 


320 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


borderland of the religions is widening day by day, as their 
agreements, not differences, are kept in view. . . . The 
tendency of all modern faiths is toward unity, simplicity, 
and purification; as the process continues with the widening 
of the suns the nations will slip off their theologies and theog- 
onies and derive more comfort from the prophet than from 
the casuist,—from the teacher than from the priest. If, in 
the final outcome, all present forms of faith disappear and a 
new combination arises, the law of the Conservation of 
Spiritual Forces must still hold sway, and ‘not one jot or 
tittle’ of the inspiration in the Testaments that have im- 
pelled mankind to righteousness will ever be lost. The 
resultant religion will not be different in spirit to the declar- 
ation of the Pentateuch, which is voiced by the Christian 
Gospel and finds its echo in the Bibles of many Creeds,— 
‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
mind, and strength: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself.’ When the nations shall have reached these heights 
of Holiness and of Brotherhood the Millennium will have 
dawned. . . . The end of religions will have come tn the 


birth of Religion.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 321 
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 
I.—SUCCESS AND FAILURE. 


(See “ Introductory Quotations.’’) 


“He fails not who makes Truth his cause, 
Nor bends to win the world’s applause ; 
He fails not—he who stakes his all 
Upon the Right, and dares to fall,” 


IIl.—FICTION AND FACT, 
(See “ Prefatory Notes.”) 


“O that those who teach us Theology could have the benefit 
of a little legal training ; enough, at least, to realize the difference 
between the fossible, the probable, and the proven !—what might 
have been, what may have been, and what Aas been or zs /” 


IlI.— A MOST ANCIENT STATEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
Co Bee RIN LILY 


(See pages 64 and 263.) 


One of the great Brahmin poets has handed down to us the 
most ancient doctrine of the Trinity, as follows :— 


‘* One God by Three Revealings is made known ; 
Each First, each Least,—and yet the Three are One; 
Swa, Vishnu, Brahma,—these Each may be 
First, Second, Third, among the Blessed Three,” 


IV.—IGNORANCE EVER MISCONCEIVES THE CHARACTER OF 
GOD. THE GROSSER THE IGNORANCE THE MORE 
MONSTROUS THE MISCONCEPTIONS, 


(See pages 60, 75, 113, 357.) 


The author, from childhood, has felt deep interest in and ten- 
derness for all forms of animal life. This feeling he has ever 
sought to manifest to birds, fish, insects, and all varieties of ani- 
mals in general, trying to win their trustfulness and gain their affec- 


322 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


tionate dependence upon him as a friend. In spite of it all they 
persistently misconceive his character, misjudge his motives, and 
fly or scamper from his presence in terror; the more benevolent 
his intentions, the greater their alarm. No doubt to their eyes 
he is a monster, ever seeking to do them harm. Among them, 
doubtless, tales are told and traditions are handed down (their 
forms of doctrines and creeds) outrageously slandering his char- 
acter as that of one who has doomed them all to perdition, ex- 
cept as they may appease his wrath or satisfy his vengeance with 
untold Offerings of Agony, Sufferings, and Blood. Now and 
then a few, more intelligent and widely experienced than the 
rest, grow distrustful, renounce the “ orthodox” Doctrines and 
Creeds, and become domesticated or tamed. But their examples 
are rejected, their faith condemned ; and the myth-loving, tradi- 
tion-keeping flocks, and shoals, and swarms, and herds croak, 
and gabble, and spout, and buzz, and hiss, and bellow, and growl, 
and bark, and roar at the schismatic Dissenters as “ Heretics and 
Infidels forever abominable and accursed.” Zhe less the tntellt- 
gence the more “ orthodox” the Belief and the more unsparing the 
Anathemas. Among those higher animals called Savages, the same 
suspicions and misconceptions prevail. A civilized man is a 
monster and an enemy, and to become civilized is treason and 
hopeless disgrace. Zhe more ignorant the savage, the more “ ortho- 
dox” his Belief, and the more unsparing his Anathemas. ‘The same 
conditions and consequences prevail in all the Religions of the 
world—Christianity not excepted. The character of God and 
the nature of His truth are grossly misconceived by ignorant 
people, always and everywhere; the grosser the ignorance the 
more monstrous the misconceptions. Myths and traditions are 
mistaken for truths; they are woven into Doctrines and Creeds 
which are pronounced orthodox and infallible,—and Whosoever 
disbelieves them shall, without doubt, perish everlastingly. From all 
this nothing can save but Enlightenment added to Piety. A most 
essential part of every true Gospel is Intelligence, Intellectual- 
ity, or (to use the Bible word) Wisdom. “ Let every man have a 
reason for the Faith that is in him.” Nay; it is “the first and 
great Commandment ”—With all thy md, as well as heart, and 
might, and strength shalt thou love the Lord thy God. The 
“mind ” has been ignored or depreciated by Priest-craft. Slave- 
holders have always found it essential to Slavery to keep their 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 323 
<i ALA Os SAR Uhr We a nl Ne NS OIE Sak pen MY 2 
slaves in ignorance. In every Religion, as truly as in every 
State, this has been the case; and Christianity monopolized by 
Priest-craft has been, and is, no exception. Increased Intelli- 
gence is the only Emancipation. Non-sectarian Education on 
the one hand, and Non-partisan Churches on the other : these 
two will prove, like giant Samson’s arms, the mighty powers of 
God for the complete overthrow of Religious Superstitions— 
whose two main supports are, Priest-Craft and Ignorance. 


V.—IN EDUCATION AS IN RELIGION THE MERCENARY SPIRIT 
WIDELY PREVAILS, 


(See pages 112, 121, 212.) 


Sophists and Philosophers are two ever-distinct and ever- 
antagonistic classes in Education, as are Hireling-Priests and 
Prophet-Priests in Religion. Philosophers are those who love 
Wisdom for her own sake, and are ever ready to communicate 
what they know to the poorest as to the richest, to the humblest 
as to the highest, and without stipulation as to “ money or price.” 
Sophists are those who love Wisdom for the “no small gain ” 
she will bring them, and communicate what they have learned 
only to the highest bidder. “ Having food and raiment” the 
Philosopher is “therewith content.” The Sophist can never be 
satisfied till he shall be “clothed in purple and fine linen, and 
fare sumptuously every day.” The same distinctions are those of 
Prophet-Priests, and Hireling-Priests. 

In the present age, Sophists seemingly predominate as they did 
in the age of Socrates: and Hireling-Priests as they did in the 
ages of Jeremiah and of Jesus. Almost as prevalent in our 
Schools, Colleges, and Universities as in our Churches, is, seem- 
ingly, the mercenary spirit—that spirit that causes money to 
be the measure of worth and the ruling power of life. As the 
Churches secure and retain pastors according to the size of the 
salary, quite certain that every minister, like other merchandise, has 
his price ; so is it widely with our Educational Institutions. Once 
the opportunity for usefulness was the main question. Lovers of 
Wisdom were wont to reply with our recent Agassiz, “I have no 
time to make money ;” or with ancient Socrates, “The foun- 
tains of Athens run with pure water, and meal is cheap in the 
markets, I desire nothing more:” or with a still more ancient 


324 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


— 


Refuser-of-Bribes, ‘‘ If the King would give me his house full of 
silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the commandment of the 
Lord—but what the Lord saith that will I speak!” But of all 
Sophists, now as ever, whether they be popular Novelists, sensa- 
tional Play-actors, Literary Buffoons or Mercenary Teachers, 
luxury-loving Professors, Hireling-Priests or whatever—the main 
question is, “ How much will you give me?” And the highest 
price always avails to draw and to hold. A J/arge-salarted Pro- 
fessorship or Instructorship, like a /arge-salaried Pastorship, is 
never vacant; even the rumor of a vacancy quickly draws an 
eager multitude of “ candidates,” while hundreds of small-salaried 
positions are forsaken or rejected: and millions of “the poor,” as 
they have no effective “Gospel preached to them,” so have 
no higher advantages of Education—if any “ advantages ”’ at all. 
Thus in Education as in Religion ; in Schools, Colleges, and Uni- 
versities as in Churches, “‘ wheresoever the carcass (fat salary) is 
there the eagles be gathered together.” Still there are Philoso- 
phers, as there are also Prophet-priests, in every land; hidden 
and absorbed in their humble stations and work, unknown to the 
noisy world, unheralded by popular applause, unrecompensed by 
pecuniary rewards—contented with Wisdom as their chief treas- 
ure and happy in doing good. “ Behold I have yet left me seven 
thousand in Israel, knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and 
mouths which have not kissed him.” 

[See two notable and noble illustrations on page 254. | 


VI.—SENSATIONALISM IN THE CHURCHES. 


(See page 255.) 


Saturday’s and Monday’s newspaper in every city and larger 
town of the land, heralds the “ musical” and other sensational 
attractions of the various churches which are to draw or have 
drawn the congregations. As a specimen, one issue of this date 
has several notices of “fine baritone solos,” of “ beautiful so- 
prano solos,” of “ fine offertories,” of “rich musical treats,” etc., 
with not one word of any Gospel to be preached. No wonder 
that, in the same newspaper, several embezzlements, defalcations, 
suicides, etc., are reported as committed by “a member of the 
Board of Missions,” by “a Church Officer,” by “a Sunday- 
School Superintendent,”’ etc. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 325 


——= 


‘“ Marvellous is it in how exhausted an atmosphere the Divine 
Spark within will glimmer on, and even warm the darkened 
chambers of the human heart.” 


Vi oor Daa Y Oe 


(See page 251.) 


The famous “ Evangelists” all make money. Those best ad- 
vertised as “ consecrated, self-sacrificing and successful savers-of- 
souls” started in poverty and ended with fine country-seats or 
stately city mansions—“ their eyes standing out with fatness, and 
having all that heart can wish.”” The same are substantially the 
facts in the case with reference to the popular and pampered 
Clergy and other Officials, of every sect of Christians, from that 
of the Roman Catholic down. And “the people love to have it 
so”’ ; being well schooled in the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing-interpre- 
tation of such passages as “the laborer is worthy of his hire,” in- 
terpreted to mean purple and fine linen with sumptuous fare 
every day; and “an hundred fold in this life,” interpreted to 
mean large salaries, costly gifts, perquisites and luxuries in gen- 
eral—such as were never heard of or thought of (except as warn- 
ings of the “fallings away ” that were to come) in the Christian 
Church “1 the beginning of the fourth Century: when began that 
Reversion and Degeneration which is the scientific designation of 
what the Bible calls “ backsliding,” “ falling away,” or “ Anti- 
Christ.” There are, indeed, thousands of humble-minded, plain- 
living Ministers of Christ who are content to minister, as did their 
divine Master and his holy Apostles, for no earthly reward be- 
yond the simple necessities of “daily bread.” To preach the 
Gospel of Repentance and of self-consecrated Holiness “ without 
money and without price” to the poor even more than to the rich 
—without Pew-tax, pressing Offertories, urged Collections, or any 
other form of s¢e-gua-non Exactions—is their chief joy. But such 
as these are never found “in king’s houses” ; are never popular 
or successful z7 the worldly sense ; are always “ persecuted ” for the 
Kingdom of Heaven’s sake, “despised and rejected”’ by the 
lofty,—men “ of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” from whom 
the world in general “ hides, as it were, their faces.” Blessed are 
these who have “been with Jesus” and learned of him. 


326 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


VIII.—COMMERCIAL BRIGANDS. 


(See pages 89-98.) 


““ROCHESTER, N. Y., Sept. 4.—At the final session of the New York Mission 
Society convention in the Church of Christ, in Howell Street, last evening, 
the Rey. of St. Louis, spoke on ‘ Social Reform in the Church,’ and 
created a stir by his reference to 

‘““* We have come to the day,’ he said, ‘ when the commercial brigand stands, 
not on the highway, to filch the passers-by, but behind a desk, levying toll on 
his fellow-citizens in the form of profit. The smell of the monopolist’s ill- 
gotten millions will not impregnate the air with one-half of the stench that do 
his donations to colleges and churches of the lands; for the latter are given under 
the mask of Religion.’ ” 


By self-seeking Greed and its inevitable crowding-out, or 
treading-down, or other heartless oppression of “‘ those who are 
weak” by “those who are strong ””—if not by créminal Fraud or 
illegal Wrong—the monopolistic Schemers fill their coffers with 
gold. Then when Conscience pricks or Death stares them in the 
face, they take out a handful to build a Church, endow a College, 
or support a Missionary ; thus they think to bribe the Supreme 
Judge, secure for themselves “a title clear to mansions in the 
skies,” and at the same time build their earthly monument and 
win—from the fawning Clergy and other flattering Officials— 
glowing Eulogies of Benefactor and Saint. 

To all such as these every true prophet says—with John-the- 
Baptist, Jesus-the-Christ, and Peter-the-Apostle boldness— 


‘“‘ Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance,—Leave there thy gift 
before the altar, go thy way, make restitution fonr-fold, then come and offer 
thy gift, but et not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.—Thy gold 
perish with thee, Jecause thou hast thought to obtain the gift of God with money. 
Thou has neither part nor lot in this matter: for ¢hy heart ts not right before 
God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray the Lord, if perhaps 
the thought of thy heart shall be forgiven thee. For I see that thou art in the 
gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” 


Their very dogs and horses dwell in magnificence ; while all 
about them subsist, in squalor and wretchedness, their fellow-men: 
—those who are “weak” in enterprise and skill, receiving no 
uplifting or encouraging “help” from those who are “ strong.” 
Hundreds of thousands of Pounds sterling,—millions upon mill- 
ions of Dollars are spent in self-indulgence and self-parade, not 
only by she royalty and the nobility, but also by those who ape 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 327 


their manners and aspire to their lofty estate—aristocracy, select- 
circle, society-leadership, or whatever else it may be called. 
And whenever, out of their superabundance, they cast a gift 
‘into the treasury ” or scatter “ the crumbs from their tables ” to 
the Lazaruses at their gates, a host of obsequious clients and 
flatterers are ready to cry out (in substance if not in phrase) “it 
is the voice of a god, and not of a man.” 

The same condition of things as existed so long, long ago when 
the Psalmist wrote : 


‘‘Lo, these are the ungodly, these prosper in the world, and these have 
riches in possession : and I said, Then have I cleansed my heart in vain, and 
washed my hands in innocency. 

‘* All the day long have I been punished: and chastened every morning. 

‘‘ Then thought I to understand this: but it was too hard for me, 

‘‘Until I went into the sanctuary of God: then understood I the end of 
these men ; 

‘‘Namely, how thou dost set them in slippery places: and castest them 
down, and destroyest them. 

‘*O how suddenly do they consume: perish, and come to a fearful end ! 

‘* Yea, even like as a dream when one awaketh: so shalt thou make their 
image to vanish out of the city.” 


Whom the New Testament Scriptures exhort and warn : 


‘Go to now, ye rich, repent and reform. for miseries are coming upon you. 
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten, Your gold and 
your silver are rusted ; and their rust shall be for a testimony against you, and 
will eat your flesh as fire. Ye have heaped up treasures for old age. Behold, 
the hire of the laborers, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth out; and 
the cries of them that labored have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sab- 
aoth. Ye have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your pleasure; ye 
have nourished your hearts as for a day of slaughter.” 


And whom the tender Jesus instructs and invites : 


‘*Sell that thou hast, and distribute among the poor. . . . and come, 
follow me. . . . Make for yourselves purses which wax not old, a treasure in 
the heavens that faileth not, where no thief draweth near, neither moth de- 
stroyeth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” 


IX.—PUNISHMENT MEANS PURIFICATION AND REFORM, NOT 
RETRIBUTION OR REVENGE :—‘‘ON EARTH AS IN HEAVEN.” 


(See pages 237, 239.) 
‘* Do we want to know what was uppermost in the minds of those who formed 
the word for punishment, the Latin Joena, or punio, to punish: the root ‘pi’ 
in Sanscrit, which means to cleanse, to purify, tells us that the Latin derivative 


328 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


was originally formed, not to express mere torturing, but cleansing, correcting 
delivering from the stain of sin, 

‘*In Sanscrit many a god is implored to cleanse away (‘ pun?hi’) the sins of 
men, and the substantive (‘Aévana’) . . . took the signification of purifi- 
cation and reform. Now it is clear that the train of thoughts which leads from 
purification to punishment reveals a moral and religious sentiment in the con- 
ception and warning of foena ; and it shows us that in the very infancy of 
criminal justice punishment was looked upon, xot as retribution or revenge, but 
as a correction and a removal of guilt. So, too, ‘ castigation’ was originally 
‘chastening’ (the common Bible word) ‘ from Castus, pure:’ and meaning, in 
like manner, a means or method of purification and reform.”—(Chips from a 
German Workshop, vol, 12., page 254.) 


This original meaning has been preserved and kept in force to 
this day by at least one isolated and simple-minded, but still ad- 
mirable and happy people, as follows : 


‘In Iceland there are no prisons, and the inhabitants are so honest in their 
habits that such defences to property as locks, bolts, and bars are not required ; 
nor are there any police in the island. Yet its history for 1000 years records 
no more than two thefts. Of these two cases, one was that of a native, who 
was detected after stealing several sheep: but as he had done so to supply his 
family, who were suffering for want of food, when he had broken his arm, pro- 
visions were furnished to them and work was found for him when able to do it, 
and meanwhile he was placed under medical care ; but the stigma attached to 
his crime was considered sufficient punishment. 

‘* The other theft was by a German, who stole seventeen sheep. But as he 
was in comfortable circumstances, and the robbery was malicious, the sentence 
passed upon him was that he should sell all his property, restore the value of 
what he had stolen, and then leave the country or be executed ; and he left at 
once. 

‘* But though crime is rare in Iceland, and its inhabitants are distinguished 
for honesty, and purity of morals, there is,of course, provision for the adminis- 
tration of justice, which consists, first of all, in the sheriff's courts; next, by 
appeals to the court of three judges at Reykjavik, the capital; and, lastly, in 
all criminal and most civil cases, to the supreme court at Copenhagen, the cap- 
ital of Denmark, of which kingdom the island forms a part. The island of 
Panaris (one of the Lipari group), is equally fortunate in having neither prisons 
nor lawyers, and being absolutely destitute of both paupers and criminals.” 


So far so good! In this one respect, at least, among this hum- 
ble people, “on Earth as in Heaven,” the Kingdom of God has 
come and His Will zs done. So may it be, also among those 
people who proudly boast that they are more highly favored and 
more highly civilized ! 

‘* The abolition of prisons by the substitution of less primitive means of de- 
terring the criminally minded from their depredations on others was advocated 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 329 


this week at the Social Science Conference at Saratoga. Mr. , corre- 
sponding secretary of the Prison Association of New York, read an able paper 
on the subject. He started with the proposition that the prisons and not the 
crime to a great extent create the stigma of criminality. We denied the exist- 
ence of a distinct criminal class and proceeded to show how the prison popula- 
tion of the country, now numbering 86,000, with an enormously expensive 
plant, might be reduced. All minors, and in fact most offenders up to thirty 
years of age, were amenable to reformatory influences. The reformatory pris- 
ons of the various States, most of which accept this age limitation, reform 
eighty per cent. of those treated against eighteen per cent, treated under the old 
system, This would take 45,000 from the prison census. Drunkards should be 
removed to asylums for medical treatment, which would take 3000 more. Of 
the 33,000 that remain, there could be a still further reduction by the general 
and rigid application of the indeterminate sentence principle and by conditional 
liberation in various forms. Mr. also advocated the system of domi- 
ciliary imprisonment by which, for certain misdemeanors, offenders should be 
sentenced to thetr own homes ; and he also spoke with favor of the New Zeal- 
and system, by which law-breakers might be released on the suretyship of two 
responsible members of society, who should promise surveillance. Zhe idea 
of retribution or vengeance should be entirely eliminated from the penal system, 
and the one dominant note should be protection to soctety by reducing the criminal 
class through reformation,” 


So may tt be,—“ on Earth as it zs in Heaven!” 


X.—GOLDEN ERAS ALL THE GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD 
HAVE HAD; BUT THESE WERE NO EVIDENCE OF THEIR 
SUPERNATURALISM NOR OF THEIR PERMANENTLY SUPERIOR 
WORTH. 


(See pages 6-12 and 38-48.) 


How futile the argument and how poorly informed those who 
argue for the essential superiority of the Christian religion over 
all the other Religions, from the “glorious civilization” of its 
golden eras—the Fourth Century and the Nineteenth! Zzex its 
Cult and Creed triumphed over those of surrounding “ Pagan- 
ism,” zow its arts and inventions outshine those of the whole 
Earth beside ! 

But every “ Pagan” Religion, too, has had its golden eras in 
which, for many centuries, z#s Cult and Creed triumphed over 
those of surrounding religions, and z¢s arts and inventions out- 
shone those of the whole Earth beside. Egypt, Babylon, China, 
India, Greece, Rome, Arabia, even ancient Tartary, Peru, and 
Mexico, to a certain extent, were once, respectively, the centre 


330 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


of the whole world’s civilization ; possessed the chief arts and 
inventions of our most advanced society ; built temples, elabo- 
rated rituals, extended and sustained institutions of Religion, 
Education, and Humanity—as magnificent, as popular, and as 
long-enduring (if not as widely extending) as Christianity, up to 
date, can boast. Were ¢heiy religions then, each in its golden 
era, the only supernatural and the ultimately supreme? So 
every one of them, in their simplicity and ignorance, thought. 
So, in turn, the popular voice and vote of Christianity proclaims to- 
day. How futile the argument! How poorly informed they 
who thus argue? “ The Kingdom of God cometh not with obser- 
vation—zt zs within you,”’ Regenerated characters and ennobled 
lives ; men, women, and children “hungering and thirsting for 
Righteousness ” ; and shining with the “ Beauty of Holiness” ; 
Cults and Creeds triumphing over Superstitions and Selfishness, 
with arts and inventions which tend to extend Purity and estab- 
lish Love in all the Earth,—these, and these only, are substantial 
evidences of the essential superiority of Christianity over the 
other religions of the World. 


XI.—CHURCHES AS SPIRITUAL HOSPITALS AND MORAL 
REFORMATORIES. 


(See pages 34 and 269.) 


On the above-named pages the Church has been figured as a 
vast System of Graded Schools adapted, by its variety of De- 
nominations or Sects (from the most ritualistic, sensational, or 
pictorial upward), to all degrees of spiritual and moral develop- 
ment,—beginning with the Picture-book or Object-lesson Depart- 
ment, and extending to that of the University or Post-University. 

A more Biblical figure is that of Spiritual Hospitals and Moral 
Reformatories, suggested by many such passages as: “Is there 
no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician ?’”—‘ They that are 
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.’”’—‘‘ The Son 
of man is come to seek and save the lost.” 

Unceasingly and almost universally have these primary mean- 
ings of the Christian Church been forgotten : and that by four 
classes. (1) Those who are called its Ministers appeal for the 
most part, and some of them entirely, to those who are already 
of the more spiritual-minded and morally-elevated character. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 331 


(2) Those who are called Church-Members, for the most part, 
commend themselves as righteous or as already “ saved ”’ (as did 
the “‘ Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ”), and condemn, if they 
do not actually “ despise ” others who are not Church-Members, 
(3) Of those who are outside the churches, the more unspiritual and 
immoral classes, for the most part, deem themselves unworthy or 
unfit to become Church-Members. (4) While those who are 
highly moral and highly intellectual (in place of being highly 
spiritual), as Skeptics criticise, or as Infidels ridicule, Church- 
Members for their combined immoralities and stupidities. 

How absurd is all this when seen in the light of the Bible’s 
chief figure of the Church as above defined! Any one can 
make the application. (1) Do physicians or other officials of 
Hospitals and Reformatories devote themselves chiefly to those 
who are already convalescent in health and well-ordered in be- 
havior? (2) Do those who are inmates of Hospitals and Re- 
formatories go, or remain, there because they are already strong 
and good? (3) Do those who are sick, or criminal, remain away 
because they are “not worthy,” or “not fit?” (3) Do those 
who are really strong in health and good in character criticise, 
much less ridicule, those whose infirmities render it essential or 
expedient for them to be inmates of Hospitals and Reformator- 
ies? Moreover, we may ask: (5) Do the superintendents and 
inmates of different Departments and Wards in these institutions 
jangle and wrangle over which is the “orthodox” Ward or De- 
partment and which the “ heterodox,’—which is “high” and 
which “low,” which is “ true” and which “ schismatic ” ? 

Ask these same questions of the Ministers, the Church-Mem- 
bers, the Un-Churched, the Skeptics and Infidels, and of the 
various jangling and wrangling Sects (from the Romanistic wp to 
the Rationalistic, or from the Rationalistic down to the Roman- 
istic, as you please), and see how wfterly absurd the widely pre- 
vailing past and present conditions of the Church have been and 
are among Christians, exactly the same as among all who are called 
Pagans, 

With renewed emphasis let us repeat the Bible passages : 

‘* Ts there no baim in Gilead? Ts there no phystctan?”’ 

‘““ They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are 
sick.” 

‘< The son of man ts come to seek and save the lost.”’ 


332 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


To which, as rebukes of Self-Righteousness, let us add: 

‘* There ts none righteous, no, not one.’’ 

“Lf we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth ts 
not in us.”’ 

‘" There is joy tn Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more 
than over ninety and nine self-righteous persons who (think that 
they) need no repentance.”’ 

And again, as rebukes of Selfishness (that Mother-Sin of all 
sins), let us add and heed : 

‘“ We that are strong ought to help the weak, and not to please 
ourselves.”’ 

‘Go out into the highways and hedges and constrain them to 
come in.”’ 

"' Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” 


XII.—-THE ONLY UNPARDONABLE SIN IS INSINCERITY: INSIN- 
CERITY IS THE FIRST-BORN CHILD OF SELF-LOVE WEDDED 
TO WILLFUL (OR AVOIDABLE) IGNORANCE. 


(See pages 116 and 148.) 


However “crankish” or “‘heathenish,” extravagant or wild, 
superstitious or stupid see peculiar beliefs may be, every 
Gy, sincere aca or man is (to use a figure of the Miners) 

“working a vein” which contains Immortal Gold. Let them 
work. The more veins discovered and developed the greater 
and more glorious will be the mass of Immortal Gold. Only in- 
sist upon it that every one shall be genuinely sincere ; that is, shall 
self-forgettingly and as intelligently as possible love and seek Truth 

—"“the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.” All such, 
whether called Brahmins, Buddhists, Confucians, Moslems, Ras 
manists, Protestants, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Christian Scien- 
tists, Mind-Healers, Adventists, Latter- Day-Saints, Dunkards, 
Revivalists, Sareea Balearcn Armies, Church Armies or what 
not, are common workers in the hidden and inexhaustible vezns 
of God's Truth ; and Zet them work. “It is the glory of God to 
hide a thing, and the glory of Kings to find it out.” Hinder no 
one from finding out as much of the Hidden Truth as he can; 
and each in his own, most sincere, most self-forgetting, and most 
intelligent way. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANIT Y. 333 


— 


“Forbid them not: for he that is not against us”’ (through the 
Insincerity of Selfishness and of willful Ignorance) “is on our 
side.” 

But, deware of Insincerity and of those who are insincere : 
beware of False Prophets who, for their own advantage, “speak 
smooth things and prophesy deceits” ; Jdeware of Wolves-in- 
sheeps-clothing (whether Pagans or Christians, Romanists or 
Protestants, Orthodox or Heterodox) who “care not for the 
sheep,” but play the shepherd in order to plunder and destroy ; 
beware of all Self-lovers who seek the “ praises of men rather 
than of God,” who “love to be called Rabbi,” who “ commend 
themselves” and all who believe as they do and “condemn 
others,” and who (for purposes of building magnificent temples, 
sustaining elaborate ceremonies, and themselves living in pomp 
and luxury) fawn upon the rich and exact from the poor—‘de- 
vouring widows’ houses and, for a pretence, making elaborate 
devotions.” In short, deware of Selfishness 7” thine own heart and 
life even more than in the hearts and lives of others: for Selfishness 
is the fertile spouse of Willful Ignorance whose first-born child 
is Insincerity ; and Lnsincerity is the only sin which “ hath never 
forgiveness.”’ 


XIIIL-—BONDAGE TO TRADITION. 


(See pages 3, 21, 257.) 


‘Sept. 5, 1897.—A letter from Bishop was read in all the Roman 
Catholic churches of the Diocese to-day, urging that all children be sent 
to the parochial schools. The Bishop quotes from a letter of the Pope to the 
Archbishops of Switzerland, urging that the Catholics must not have mixed 
schools. 

‘‘The Bishop says much can be done by encouraging parents and seconding 
the zeal of the pastors, which will sustain the cause of Catholic education in the 
midst of opposition or trial.” 


‘The fourth Lambeth conference, which has lately ended its sessions, has 
tended to emphasize the fact that year by year Anglican ideas and customs are 
creeping into the corporate life of the Episcopal Church in America. While 
there is no legislative power in this conference, there is something more effec- 
tive in its working, and that is, its most persuasive side-influences. All who 
visit the cathedrals notice the attractiveness of their ceremonies, and are natur- 
ally inclined to emulate them in this land, This has been going on for some 


334 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

Sd Seite AD OAL Wie! SL DONO women EOL BL 
time, together with the importation of knee-breeches and aprons for the bishops. 
Every Anglican feature has been so hailed with joy in certain quarters that agi- 
tation for creating the patriarchate of Canterbury ventured to make its public 
bow before the conference this year. The wiser heads were obliged to make 
known in indirect ways the inexpediency of such a movement ; but whether it 
will appear again in another dress must be somewhat determined by the set of 
the tide in the American Episcopal Church,” 


‘*The granite fact of the survivals in higher religions of the imperfect con- 
ceptions of primitive cults is not to be conjured away by any devices of reason- 
ing. Fetichistic survivals may still be detected in the stories of children and 
even in the forms of ecclesiastical Christianity. Dean Stanley, in his Christian 
Lnstitutions—faithful to history—has shown how usages and superstitions have 
survived the lapse of centuries, some of them being beyond doubt of Pagan 
origin. Primitive and modern religions are one in different stages of growth, 
The religion of him who in the words of the dramatist might say— 


‘ Indian-like, 
Religious in mine error, I adore 
The sun, that looks upon his worshipper, 
But knows of him no more’— 


is not in essence different from that of him who bows in Westminster Abbey or 
in Notre Dame.” 


‘“ When an individual soul becomes liberated from dogmatic ecclesiasticism 
and begins to realize that the Christ-power literally dwells within, then is the 
dawning of the new spiritual birth. Whenever a thought is born in the mind 
which tends to quicken one’s spiritual perceptions and give new glimpses of the 
infinite possibilities of his own soul-forces, that moment he has entered the 
incipient stage of his spiritual development.” 


‘* The question that every pastor and congregation need to ask is, How can 
the Christian life and resources of this church be utilized for the utmost moral 
and spiritual impression upon this community? The Church is bound by no 
principles that compel it to weaken itself in doing the work of Christ. There 
are no orders of services or methods of work that should not be at once abandoned 
if others would be more effective. Traditions, associations, and customs, how- 
ever venerable, must be held in rigid subordination to the work of reaching and 
saving men. Even the Church itself is not an end, but the means to the end of 
saving human souls. Those men and churches who travel most scrupulously in 
the old ways are often regarded by those who indulge in superficial estimates as 
the most loyal to the Christian idea and genius. The exact reverse is the fact. 
A thorough-going Christian should be always ready to leave old paths, associa- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 335 
ce tien 2 Ya hE SE LEE LD SE SOTA IS TE EE eh ke SPA eT 
tions, methods, and traditions the moment it can be shown that new paths and 
new methods are preferable, provided the innovation is not in violation of Scrip- 
tural principles. Christians should always be ready to test their observances, 
methods, and institutions by the New Testament.” 


XIV.—TRUE RELIGION IS CATHOLIC: AS SUCH IT COMBINES THE 
GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL OF ALL THE RELIGIONS OF MANKIND. 


(See pages 21 to 33, also 269 and 294.) 


‘To which of these Religions do you belong? asked Meister. To all; for 
all combined constitute the true Religion.” 


‘“‘ The true Religion of the future will be the fulfilment of all the religions of 
the past—the true Religion of Humanity, that which, in the struggle of history, 
remains as the indestructible portion of all the so-called false religions of man- 
kind. There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, 
unless you call a child a false man. All religions, so far as I know them, had 
the same purpose; all were links in a chain which connects heaven and earth, 
and which is held, and always was held, by one and the same hand. All here 
on earth tends toward right, and truth, and perfection; nothing here on earth 
can ever be quite right, quite true, quite perfect, not even Christianity—or 
what is now called Christianity—so long as it excludes all other religions, 
instead of loving and embracing what is good in each. Nothing to my mind 
can be sadder than reading the sacred books of mankind—and yet nothing 
more encouraging. They are full of rubbish ; but among that rubbish there 
are old stones which the builders of the true Temple of Humanity will not 
reject—must not reject, if their Temple is to hold all who worship God in 
spirit, in truth, and in life.” 


In the Greenacre Course of Lectures (1897) : 


fer) he: Rev. Mr. introduced his lecture by reading a few passages 
from the sacred books of the different religions, to illustrate the spirit in which 
he proposed to treat the subject—the spirit of sympathy and appreciation, After 
illustrating by means of a diagram the reason why none of the special religions 
can ever become identical with Universal Religion, the lecturer continued by 
drawing a series of five contrasts between Universal Religion and the world’s 
religions ; thus showing the futility of the hope expressed by devotees of each 
of the great religions that their own faith will eventually absorb all the rest.” 


In conclusion the speaker said : 


‘© A union of conflicting systems of faith there can be none. The only pos- 
sible union is one of souls not of systems ; souls united on the basis of perfect 
liberty in perfect love for the attainment of Truth and Right. Thus will the 


1 


336 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


race be lifted above all differences of caste, color, creed into one sublime uni- 
versal fellowship ; one in the freedom of the Truth, one in the joy of paths 
untrod, one in spiritual equality, in the Religion of Humanity, the Universal 
Religion.” 


“‘ The conference at the Isles of Shoals (1897) shows more clearly than ever 
a disposition on the part of some prominent clergymen to unite, not only in 
ordinary Christian work, but in an attempt, at least, to find some common 
platform for union. The rank and file of the denominations have showed much 
more liberal tendencies than the clergy have shown. 

‘‘On the Unitarian side, there was a frank admission that the present differ- 
ences were chiefly manifested in thought and speech about Jesus. With this, 
however, it was claimed that while the creeds differed, the sects were united by 
the essentials of faith, and divided by non-essentials. ‘It is time,’ said one of 
the speakers, ‘ to see how far we can work together on various lines of Christian 
work,’ All this was cordially assented to on the Trinitarian side without an 
endeavor to state or to attenuate the admitted differences. But the friendly 
disposition of the Trinitarians was made more plainly apparent in a letter read 
from Rev. Dr. of New Haven, who is one of the ablest and most popu- 
lar clergymen among Trinitarians in New England. He is a representative 
man, and has been well known as a progressive and liberal clergyman. The 
following quotation will show, not only his own individual views and feelings, 
but those also of a very large wing of the denomination. ‘I sympathize with 
the objects of your conference, and rejoice in everything that brings our two 
bodies into closer relations. I feel sure that reunion will come in time. It 
will not come at once, but time and change of opinion on each side, with char- 
ity, will bring it about. It will not be by capitulation, nor can it be effected 
by management : it will come by development and because we have grown 
toward each other.’ ‘This coming from so distinguished a clergyman, and one 
who occupies one of the most important pulpits in New England, must carry 
with it great weight. The former polemic attitude has been exchanged for a 
better mutual understanding in a conciliatory spirit. The issue of this ten- 
dency, now more strongly marked than ever, is still uncertain, but is still 
hopeful. Progress in the line of breaking the old blind servitude to religion, 
thanks to science and learning, is constant all over the world, and all attempts to 
stay tts hand wtil come to naught.” 


XV.--TENDENCIES TO POMP, LUXURY, AND WEALTH AMONG 
THOSE WHO ARE CALLED MINISTERS OF CHRIST. 


(See pages 119 and 213.) 


“In these days of utilitarian and materialistic civilization, when 
everything is sacrificed to physical comforts and social ambitions, 
when science is prized for its industrial applications chiefly, and 
democratic ideas are married to the fetichism of machinery and 
the increasing idolatry of wealth ”’—it is a shame for even one who 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 337 


calls himself a Christian minister to hold his peace, much more 
to be himself a seeker of pomp and luxury or a grasper of gold. 

An estimable and highly-educated clergyman of refined dispo- 
sition and tastes, who had always refused to minister as Pastor of 
any pew-renting church, or to stipulate as to exact amount of 
salary, insisting upon receiving only free-will offerings sufficient 
for the modest comforts of his family, was offered a fine residence 
as a gift from a wealthy parishioner. He politely declined it in 
the following words: My divine Master had “not where to lay 
his head,” and “the disciple should not be above his Master.” 
With needful food and decent raiment, thus far, have I always 
been content ; and so will I continue to the end. I prefer to 
say, with the Apostle, “I have coveted no man’s silver or gold”: 
and to sing with the poet,—— 


“* No foot of land do T possess, 
Nor cottage in this wilderness.”’ 


The most Christian vow that a Christian minister ever took is 
the vow of Poverty. Alas? that in its place the ambition for 
pomp, luxury, and wealth should widely prevail, and in the 
“ Apostolic ” Churches more widely than among “ the Sects.” 

We read of a present Archbishop of the Anglo “ Apostolic” 
Church who, in addition to private wealth, accepts a “living ” of 
$72,000 a year, with numerous rich perquisites besides, dwells in 
a palace with no end to liveried servants, and fairly rivals the 
Pope of Rome in the state and ceremony of his official displays. 
Quite naturally his example is followed, so far as the “ livings ” 
will permit, by other Archbishops, and by Bishops and other 
Clergy of the Protestant the same as of the Roman Churches, all 
over the world. Of such, without undeserved rebuke, it may be 
said, “their eyes have they shut’ to the example, and “their 
ears have they closed” to the voice of him who said: “It is 
enough that the disciple be as his Master.”—‘“ Ve shall indeed 
drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the bap- 
tism that I am baptized with.” Of course the reply will be: 
All that was meant for the Apostles and Martyrs of the Early Cen- 
turies; we live in different times. How “ different” let our 
Criminal Records and similar Statistics show! The citation 
which follows is only one of a multitude of indications that the 
times we live in are not so “ different ” after all. 


338 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


XVI.—THE CONDITION OF SECTARIAN MISSIONS ILLUSTRATES 
THAT OF SECTARIAN CHURCHES IN GENERAL AND OF THE 
PROPAGANDISM OF RELIGIOUS PARTISANSHIP THE WORLD 
OVER. 

(See every page of this volume.) 


‘* A writer in the /udependent of this week—Rev. Dr. , a well-known 
Presbyterian clergyman,—claims to have discovered one of the principal causes 
of the financial troubles of the Missionary societies connected with the different 
denominations in this country. He has had for one year, in connection with 
the committee of one of these societies, an experience which has been one of 
the ‘saddest and most mournful’ of his whole life. The Church, he says, has 
lost faith in its denominational missions. The cry of debt is heard at the treas- 
ury of every one of the denominations. Thoughtful men and women in all 
branches of the Church have come by common enlightenment of opinion to see 
that the present system is not only wasteful of men and money, but is proving 
to be positively destructive of the higher social interests of our new communities. 

lr proceeds to give some striking examples of the waste of money 
andmen. He takes for illustration, the State of , and wishes it to be 
distinctly understood that this State is in no wise an exceptional one. The 
State missionaries—many of them are well known to the writer—are said to be 
laborious, faithful men, but they are victims of the system. The Methodists, 
Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Christians have each separate 
systems of missions. Five State missionaries are busy travelling continually 
over the State looking after denominational interests, doing a work which one 
good man with an assistant could do. They do not have separate parts of the 
State assigned to them, but they follow each other in the same track. Dr. 
alludes to a little village of four hundred inhabitants with all the de- 
nominations eager to get a foothold there. The Congregational church has only 
fifteen members, the Methodist twelve, the Baptist twenty, the Presbyterian 
six, the Christian church three, and the place is probably visited by an Episco- 
palian and a Catholic priest for occasional services in private houses. Dr. 
declares that this is no uncommon case. There are, actually, five or 
six missionaries to look after this little hamlet, and they go in Indian file, 
treading upon one another’s heels, when one man could do the whole work ; 
and the astounding statement is made that the salaries of these men average, 
with their expenses, two thousand dollars per year. 

‘*Tf this statement is correct, and we see no reason to doubt it, it shows an 
expenditure of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars where three or four would be 
an ample sum, Of course each of these little churches of from six to twelve or 
fifteen members has a pastor, with a further waste of time and money, five or 
six fold above what is necessary. Again, all these churches have to be housed, 
when one edifice would accommodate the whole, and here is again a great 
waste of money. All these churches are pauperized and are supported by the 
charities of the churches throughout the country. Religion in this community 
is really a minister of disintegration. It is confidently stated that if one wishes 
to see and understand the condition of the West, so far as religious matters are 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 339 


concerned, he has but to multiply this case by thousands and tens of thousands. 
It would certainly be a good work for the missionary societies to thin out these 
churches rather than plant more. 

‘* Some time ago, a number of promising young men from Yale Seminary 
were sent out to this Western field, and it was trumpeted all over the country as 
a most sacrificing work for the ‘ Yale Band.’ Two of these heroic young men 
were sent into the destitute regions of the West and great things were expected 
of them. ‘Two of them were sent to the Pacific slope. One was assigned toa 
feeble little church where four or five others were struggling for existence in a 
forlorn little town. He published a protest in some paper against his own 
work, and one of the officers of a missionary society stated that it cost his 
society thirty thousand dollars. It is reliably stated that churches are consti- 
tuted in the West with two or three members; four is considered a fair num- 
ber, and eight or ten are thought to furnish a very promising field. 

‘* Tf these statements did not come from perfectly reliable sources, they could 
hardly be believed. It is no wonder that the churches, upon learning these 
facts, withhold their funds, Zs competition among the denominations to pro- 
pagate each its own theological tenets at any cost of money and time, has come to 
be a serious question, and it ts quite time to call a halt.”— Boston Transcript, 
Sept. 11, 1897. 


XVII.—-WHAT THEN IS THE REMEDY, AND WHERE? 


(See also every page of this volume.) 


The only remedy is “ The Cross of Christ ”»—the crucifixion of 
that Self-Love which forever and everywhere has produced essen- 
tial Systems, exclustve Schools, and partisan Sects ; tsms, arians, 
and zsts. Self-Love is the prolific mother of the whole pestifer- 
ous brood. 


Not only the numerous ‘‘ orthodox ” zsms, artans, and ists but the ‘‘ hetero- 
dox” as well—Positivzsmzs, Unitarzans, Free-Religionzs¢s, Scientzs¢s, Spiritual- 
ists, Theosophis¢s, Brahmanzsts, Buddhists, and every other zs, arian, and 
zst to the end of the list, is in the same condemnation. Each comes with a cut 
and-dried ‘‘ System ”’—an essential proposition or formula with its logical in- 
ferences, categorical imperatives, s¢ze gua mon doctrines and methods—which 
it thrusts into the face of the rest of the world, saying, Accept this or you are 
a fool, if not a heretic! Whereas they ought to say (on both sides and all sides) 
‘* Brother, Sister, this is how Truth appears to me ; How appears it to you? 
This is my testimony for the Lord ; let me now hear yours.” As to ames, 
none should be used but those which indicate or suggest world-wide inclusive- 
ness and hospitality: such as Truth-lovers, Truth-seekers, Sons-and-Daughters- 
of-God, Followers-of-God-as-dear-Children, Workers-together-with-God,—or, 
better than all, and covering them all, the simple name Christians, which 
means nothing moreand nothing less than ‘‘ Anointed (that is, self-consecrated, 
and, as such, accepted or adopted) Children of God.” As to methods of Wor- 


340 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


ees pahiciooidee 


ship and Work ; all methods that are sincere and self-forgetting or unselfish, 
are equally acceptable to God and should receive equal forbearance, if not 
favor, from men. ‘‘ One man esteemeth one day as more sacred than another, 
another esteemeth all alike. One eateth this, and another that. Let every 
man be persuaded in his own mind,” That is, let there be no essential System, 
no exclusive Sect, based on methods of Worship and Work. Let all strive to be 
genuinely sincere and unselfish ; then, let them worship and work as may seem 
to each one most elevating and effective. ‘‘ Who art thou that judgest another 
man’s servant?’’ Follow the dictates of thine ‘‘ own conscience” and permit 
thy fellowmen to do the same, All this means ‘‘ The Cross of Christ ”’—that 
crucifixion of Self-love which is the only remedy for the prevalent Sectarianism 
of the religious world. 


Where shall this “only remedy” be learned? At the feet of 
Jesus, beholding his example and listening to his gracious words. 

“ Stretching out his hands to-his disciples he said : Who is my 
mother, and who are my sisters and brethren? very one that 
doeth the Will of my Father, who is in Heaven, the same is my 
mother, my sister, and my brother.’’ Such was the inclusiveness 
of his Creed. What he meant by the “Will of my Father” he 
plainly states elsewhere : “ Zhou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
the first and great commandment. And the second ts like unto it: 
Lhou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commana- 
ments hang all the Law and the Prophets.’’ And what he meant 
by “love the Lord ” and “love thy neighbor ” he beautifully and 
simply explains in the Beatitudes: “ Be pure in heart. Be meek. 
Be humble. Be merciful. Be peace-makers. Hunger and thirst 
for righteousness.” 

These were 47s only essential doctrines, the only requirements 
for 4s discipleship, the only door into 47s Church,—the only gate 
into #zs eternal kingdom of Heaven. Hence, every one who 
doeth, or seeketh to do, these plain and simple—but yet self- 
denying and self-crucifying—things, is a Christian (an anointed or 
accepted child of God) though he may be called of men by what- 
ever rejecting and reproachful names. Not till all Churches, 
Missions, religious Societies of whatever sort in all the world are 
reorganized on this zuclusive and eclectic basis of Jesus the Christ, 
will the Kingdom of God come and his will be done, on Earth 
as it is in Heaven. 

The Beatitudes are the only essential Creed, the Two Great 
Commandments the only essential Doctrines of the Christian 


KRENA SCLIN CHRISTIANITY. 341 
Church as Jesus established it. When this is recognized and re- 
garded, Systems and Sects will fall, partisanship and exclusiveness 
will cease, and the One Catholic Church will stretch out arms of 
welcome and love to all, of every nation and name, who, by the 
standards of The Beatitudes and The Two Great Command- 
ments, rightly belong to “ The Blessed Company of All Faithful 
People.” 

Meanwhile let those who do already recognize and regard this 
original and only genuine meaning of Christianity, whether few 
or many, refuse to take or to retain the name of any less inclu- 
sive System, School, or Sect ; but (rejecting their errors and lay- 
ing claim to everything good, beautiful, and true), delong to them 
all, ‘Thus will they represent, sustain, and hasten forward True 
Religion—which is the Eclectic and Universal Religion of Jesus 
the Christ. 


XVIII. SECTARIANISM AND CATHOLICITY. 


(See pages 27-32.) 


‘* His growing spirit found itself cramped by walls built for men of other cen- 
turies and other stature ; till, at length, his secret tortures compelled him to 
openly renounce the Traditional Beliefs with all their worldly advantages, say- 
ing simply to his pleading friends, ‘No, I cannot lie for God.’ Thus did he 
pass fearlessly out of the Church faréza/ to be a helper and a light in the Church 
Universal.” 


This is written of John Sterling and his experience as a clergy- 
man of the Church of England. Equally is it the experience of 
every truly Catholic soul—from Abraham, who “ went out not 
knowing whither he went”; and Paul, who “ was not disobedient 
to the heavenly vision’”’; down to the humblest Dissenter of to- 
day who, “ forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching 
forward to the things which are before, presses on toward the goal 
unto the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus the Christ.” 
This “land of promise” and “heavenly vision” and “ high call- 
ing of God” meant, and means, a Religion Catholic and Universal 
(in place of one Sectarian and Partial), as portrayed by the Reve- 
lator in the figure of the Heavenly City “ having twelve gates” 
open, with equal hospitality toward the “east, and north, and 
south, and west,” and never to be closed. ‘“‘ And the gates thereof 
shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night 
there): and they shall bring the glory and the honour of the 


342 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it any that 
are unclean, or that make an abomination or a lie.” 


NOTE, 


No need of closed gates nor of any other form of forced exclusion. Even now 
and here one could not constrain—could not, for any price, induce—those who 
are ‘‘unclean, or who make an abomination or a lie,” to dwell in companionship 
with those who are ‘‘ pure in heart” or who ‘‘ hunger and thirst for righteous- 
ness ’’; ’t would be a worse than Hell. How much more so when the ‘‘ pure in 
heart’ have become oly (perfectly pure) and the ‘‘ unclean” are ‘‘ unclean 
still.” 

Such is the lucid meaning of the Scriptures—‘‘ The gates thereof shall in 
no wise be shut”; and ‘‘ there shall in no wise enter into it any that are unclean, 
or that make an abomination or a lie.” Twelve gates ofen, with equal and un- 
ceasing invitation toward every corner of the Universe, 7 no wise and mever 
to be shut : those within remain within because such is their affinity and choice: 
those without remain without because such is ¢hezr affinity and choice—while, 
forever and ever, ‘‘the Spirit and the Church say, Come . . . whosoever 
will, let him take the water of life freely.” 

Such is the ¢rwe Church, Catholic and Universal, ‘‘on Earth as it is in 
Heaven”: it écludes all who are ‘‘ pure in heart” or who ‘‘ hunger and thirst 
for righteousness’’: it excludes none but the ‘‘ unrighteous” or the ‘‘ unclean,” 
—and even these are se//-excluded by the everlasting law of Affinity and Choice, 


XIX. THE INEVITABLE DECAY OF RELIGION AND ITS CONSTANT 
NEED OF RENASCENCE OR REFORM. 


(Chips from a German Workshop, vol. i. See pages 208-212.) 


‘* If there is one thing which the Comparative Study of Religions places in 
the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. 
It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion has ever continued to be 
what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles. Yet it is 
but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, t. e., without a 
constant return to tts fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay 
the most perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others, suffers 
from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of 
its being breathed. 

‘* Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free 
from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of 
the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high 
stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of 
their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to 
found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in 
their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who 
profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more 
particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the foreign and 
worldly elements encroach more and more on the original foundation, and 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 343 


human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the plan which the founder 
had conceived in his own heart, and matured in his communings with his God. 
Even those who lived with the Buddha misunderstood his words. At the Great 
Council which had to settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine 
had to remind the assembled priests that what had been said by the Buddha, 
that alone was well said; and that certain works ascribed to him, as, for in- 
stance, the instruction given to his son, Rahula, were apocryphal, if not 
heretical. With every century, Buddhism, when it was accepted by nations, 
differing as widely as Mongols and Hindus, when its sacred writings were trans- 
lated into languages as wide apart as Sanskrit and Chinese, assumed widely 
different aspects, till at last the Buddhism of the Shamans in the steppes of 
Tartary is as different from the teaching of the original Samana, as the Chris- 
tianity of many Christians is from the teaching of the Christ, If missionaries 
could show to the Brahmans, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, nay, even to the 
Mohammedans, how much their present faith differs from the faith of their 
founders ; if they could place in their hands and read with them in a kindly 
spirit the original documents on which these various religions profess to be 
founded, and enable them to distinguish between the doctrines of their own 
sacred books and the additions of later ages ; an important advantage would be 
gained, and the choice between the Christ and other Masters would be rendered 
far more easy to many a truth-seeking soul. But for that purpose z¢2s necessary 
that we, too, should see the beam in our own eyes, and to learn to distinguish be- 
tween the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of the Christ. 
If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not win as many 
hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember that it was the Christian- 
ity of the first century 7 all tts dogmatic simplicity, but with its overpowering 
love of God and man, that conquered the world and superseded religions and 
philosophies, more difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical sys- 
tems of Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in 
reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something when 
reading with us the Gospel of the Christ. Never shall I forget the deep 
despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who had pictured 
to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a Christian country must 
be, and who when he came to Europe found everything so different from what 
he had imagined in his lonely meditations at Benares! J/¢ was the Bible only 
that saved him from returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern be- 
neath theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years, be- 
neath pharisaical hypocrisy, bigotry, and want of charity, the buried, but still 
living seed, committed to the earth by the Christ and His Apostles. How can a 
missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, 
unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to 
be ; unless he may show that, like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had 
its history ; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity 
of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the Middle Ages was not that of 
the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of 
the Apostles, and that what has been said by the Christ, that alone was well 
said,” 


344 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


XX.—THE CRITICAL FACULTY AND ITS BENEVOLENT USE. 
(See Introductory Notes.) 


Now and then we come across persons, particularly women 
known as “scrupulously orderly and neat,’’ who seem to have 
telescopic vision. This faculty always proves very inconvenient to 
its possessors, and exceedingly annoying and unwelcome to those 
about them who are persistently in love with more or less of dis- 
order and dirt. However, the advance from the brute and the 
savage depends upon the possession and use of such Zelescopte 
viston. ‘The same is true of the Critical Faculty as applied alike 
to intellectual, moral, and religious conditions. Those who in 
any of these departments, but especially in the latter—possess it, 
and use it in the spirit of Him who “ chasteneth whom He loveth 
and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth,” must be, as such 
ever have been, “men of sorrows and acquainted with grief ”’ ; 
they must also be, as such ever have been, “ despised and perse- 
cuted of men.” Nevertheless upon their faithful use of this 
Heaven-bestowed talent depends all “ preparings of the way for 
the Kingdom of God ”—all upward advance of intellect, charac- 
ter, and soul. 

‘* He ts like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap.” 

“A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him.”’ 

‘* Nevertheless, afterward tt yieldeth the peaceable frutt of right- 
cousness.”’ 


XXI.—MERCENARY MOTIVES. 
(See pages 112, 119, 25.3.) 


Never has any true reformer or benefactor in State or Church 
received, or been willing to receive, large pecuniary rewards in 
return for beneficent services rendered. “ Our exhortation was 
not of deceit—nor in guile—neither at any time used we flatter- 
ing words—wor a cloak of courteousness, as God is our witness— 
nor of men sought we glory—decause we would not be chargeable 
unto any of you—neither did we eat any man’s bread for nought, 
but wrought with labor and travail night and day—not because 
we have not power, dut to make ourselves an ensample unto you to 
follow.” 

For all most substantial benefits the world is least thankful 
and renders scantiest pay. Its luxuries, diversions, and enter- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 345 


tainments are valued at a great price; and those who furnish 
them are rewarded with riches and abundant praise. But its 
nourishment—alike of body, mind, and soul—and all that stimu- 
lates and sustains its Aigher life is lightly valued: and those who 
proffer it have long since learned neither to expect nor desire 
any adequate earthly reward. The masses of mankind ever have 
been and still are spiritual and intellectual, as well as physical, 
Esaus—caring more for “a mess of pottage” than for their 
“birthright.” Whosoever will serve them with the “ pottage”’ is 
sure of wealth and honor in return, From the farmer and the 
mechanic up to the author and the preacher, now as hitherto, no 
producers ever grow “rich” except producers of superfluities and 
superficialities—knick-knacks, ornamentations, and gew-gaws,— 
novelties, novels, and nonsense: these, in all the religious and 
mental as well as material markets of the world, are eagerly sought 
for, and bring “no small gain ” to whomsoever will produce and 
offer them. ‘“‘ Because wide is the gate, and broad is the way, 
that leadeth to destruction, and many be they that enter in thereby. 
But narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth 
unto life, and few be they that find it.” 


XXII.—MELIORATION AND THE MELIORATORS, 


(See all the pages of this volume.) 


Pessimism is the belief that things are hopelessly bad. Optim- 
ism is the belief that things are just about as they ought to be. 
“Of the two it is hard to say which does the greater mischief. 
Pessimism may paralyze by leading to discouragement ; but op- 
timism may also paralyze by inducing a supine and inert com- 
placency. But there is a third position, which has received the 
rather awkward name of meliorism. The meliorist is one who 
tries to see things not as he wishes they were nor as he fears they 
may be, but as they really are. He considers not only the ad- 
vantages of the situation, but its drawbacks, not only its dangers, 
but its promises: and always with a faith that z¢ can be tmproved 
and a determination to do his best to improve tt. He sees that it is 
neither as bad nor as good as it can be, but that it can be made 
better. The meliorist is an ameliorator. 

“Unfortunately, the meliorist incurs the displeasure of both 
the pessimist and the optimist. The pessimist considers him an 


346 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


optimist for continuing to work at what seems to the pessimist 
a useless task. The optimist considers him a pessimist because 
he disturbs his complacent enjoyment by pointing out dangers 
and defects which the optimist would rather not see. This puts 
the meliorist in a very unpleasant position. On the one hand, he 
cannot conscientiously be silent in the face of dangers that 
plainly beset the cause he loves; nor, on the other hand, does he 
like to displease those sensitive souls who cannot bear to be told 
that all is not exactly as it should be. He would like as well as 
anybody else to be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease; 
but he sees too clearly that he cannot be exempt from that law of 
eternal vigilance and struggle by which others fought to win the 
prize and sailed through bloody seas. He would like as well as 
anybody else to receive that favor which men are apt to give to 
those who persuade them that everything ts as they wish it were. 

“Tt is to the meliorist, and not to the contented optimist, that 
the world owes its progress. Amos was not a pessimist when he 
warned those who were at ease in Zion; nor Jeremiah, when he 
protested against those who healed the hurt of the daughter of 
his people, lightly saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ when there was no 
peace ; nor Isaiah, when he rebuked the complacent and well- 
satisfied folk, who said to the seers, ‘See not!’ and to the 
prophets, ‘Prophesy not unto us right things: speak unto us 
smooth things.’ It was not pessimism that sent out the ‘Woe 
unto you!’ from the Master against those who had everything 
secure: or that made Paul, whose heart’s desire was that Israel 
might be saved, yet warn her that her heritage was passing to the 
Gentile. In every such case the warning is given, not out of a 
lack of courage or faith, certainly not out of any fear that the 
right will not finally prevail, but out of grief that they to whom 
the talent and the opportunity had been intrusted should let 
them slip from their hands.” 


Among the recently discovered “ Logia of Jesus,” is the fol- 
lowing : 

‘* Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the flesh was I seen 
of them, and I found all men drunken, and none found I athirst among them ; 
and my soul grieveth over the sons of men because they are blind in their heart.” 

Such is the spirit and such, in substance, the language of every 
one who is a true Meliorator of Mankind. 


RENASCENT CHLASTIANTIEY. 347 


XXIIIL—SENSATIONAL WORSHIP. 
(Additional to page 324.) 


Similar conditions are reported to us from the Cathedrals and 
other churches of England during the pre-Reformation centuries : 


‘* Chanters are found in various churches who, with inflated cheeks, imitate 
the noise of thunder and then murmur, whisper, allow their voices to expire, 


keeping their mouth open . . . now you would think you hear the neighing 
of horses, now the voice of a woman . . ._ the audience gaze, filled with 
wonder and admiration . . . it seems tothem that they are at the play and 


not at church, and that they have only to look and not to pray.”—Aelred, 
Abbot of Rievaulx, 12th century. 


XXIV.—ANOTHER VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. 


(See all the pages of this volume.) 


A well-known pastor of a well-known “ Orthodox ” Protestant 
Church in New York City bravely testified as follows, in a recent 
sermon : 


‘* Preachers of the Gospel live at ease, abounding in comforts, rewarded and 
praised by the world. If we were otherwise the people who now honor us 
would not tolerate us. Canon Farrar has said that not more than four per 
cent. of the working classes attend church in England. A similar condition 
exists in this country. The great masses have been alienated from the Church, 
while the Church is making progress among the so-called higher classes: but 
that progress is gained by forsaking the teachings of him who when upon the 
earth gave as proof of his Messiahship the fact that the poor had the Gospel 
preached to them. 

‘‘ Weare winning the ‘higher circles’ of society decause we permit those circles 
to mould Christianity into their own image, Time was when it cost something 
to be a Christian. It cost comfort, fortune, honor, life itself—to-day it costs 
nothing ; it is respectable, fashionable. 

‘Christ says, ‘ whosoever does not bear the cross and come after me cannot 
be my disciple.’ Our cross—for I take the charge to myself also—where is it ? 
What sacrifices, what afflictions, what humiliations does our faith cause us to 
bear? Are we not indulging with the most worldly in that same luxury, ex- 
travagance, and worldliness that ought to give us shame?”— The Vew York 
Times, Sept. 20, 1897. 


Verily the times seem to be here again which preceded the 
Renaissance in Europe, when St. Francis said to those “ mutterers 
of prayers’ who called themselves the Clergy : 


348 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


‘* The holy martyrs died fighting for the faith of Christ. But there are in 
our time, preachers who by the mere telling over the deeds of martyrs, seek 
money and honor of men. There are also some among you who like better to 
preach on the virtues of the saints than to imitate their labors. . . When 
thou shalt have a psalter so shalt thou wish for a breviary, and when thou shal 
have a breviary, thou shalt sit in a chair like a great prelate, and say to thy 
brother: ‘ Brother, fetch me my breviary !’” 


Of the same pre-Renascent period, during which (as in the 
pre-Christian, the pre-Reformation, and the present pre-Renascent 
periods) many and magnificent churches were patronized by rich 
and oppressive formalists, while the masses, called the /ower classes, 
were “as sheep without shepherds ” : when Religion, in its fash- 
ionable form, had become mere lip-service and priestly-parade : 
when Insincerity, Self-Seeking, and Make-Believe were the 
“Three in One” whom the popular clergy preached and the 
orthodox people worshipped—of this period (as of the similar 
ones mentioned) we have striking pictures also in Piers Plow- 
man and later in the writings of Wycliffe: 


‘‘Chief guardians of the flock who busy themselves with their ‘ Owelles’ 
only to pluck, not to feed, them . . . shams and insincere, ‘ faux sem- 
blants’ . . . who trafficin holy things, absolve for money, sell heaven, 
deceive the simple, and appear as if they ‘ hadden leve to lye al here lyf after.’ 
They laud all the saints except St. Truth. Have they ever honored her? No, 
never! . . . With none of the saint about them save the garb, whose ex- 
ample teaches the world to despise clerical dress, those who wear it, and even 
the religion itself that tolerates and sustains it.” 


Of all those who thus dared (or dare) to speak the truth, of 
course it was (and is) written, as of Wycliffe when his ashes were 
scattered to the winds: “ Organum diabolicum, hostis Ecclesiz, 
confusio vulgi, hereticorum idolum, hypocritarum speculum, 
schismatis incentor, odii seminator, mendacii fabricator.” 

With such shepherds to lead the flocks no wonder, as said 
Dante of his times, “the sheep come home from pasture wind- 
fed.” One can well understand the sincerity of that famous 
English writer of the same period, who exclaimed : 


** Tf such are the inhabitants of Paradise what have I to do there? Therein 
Iseek not toenter. . . But into Hell would I fain go; for there fare the 
goodly Clerks, the goodly Knights that fall in harness, and stout men-at-arms, 
and all men noble—with these would I gladly go.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIA NIT Y. 349 


Though the “ four per cent.” as above given may not express 
the average of habitual church attendance throughout what are 
called Christian lands, nevertheless it is unquestionably true that 
the overwhelming majorities everywhere, and particularly in 
Protestant communities, are unreached by any form of the Gos- 
pel. They are indeed “as sheep without shepherds.” Why ? 
Among other reasons (given in various parts of this volume) the 
two which follow are chief. First, the Gospel itself has been 
made over to suit the sensational, or ceremonial, and the fastidious 
or selfish, tastes of those chief patrons of the Church who call 
themselves the upper classes. Second, of those ministers of Christ 
who refuse to thus make over the Gospel, thousands “ stand idle 
in the market-place all the day because no man hath hired” 
them :—the treasuries of the Church being so scantily filled by its 
tich patrons, and the scant contents so largely emptied into 
the pockets of those who are willing to make over the Gospel for 
salaries, ranging from the Pope’s and Cardinal’s, the Archbishop’s 
and Bishop’s magnificent “livings’’ and the Priest’s or Pastor’s 
$20,000 per annum (and perquisites) downward. Suppose these 
thousands who “ stand idle,” and the thousands more from our 
Colleges who would gladly enter a ¢vw/y Gospel Ministry, were 
assured of a common treasury and a reasonable eguality of support 
for the entire body of accepted Ministers of Christ: with no sec- 
tarian, doctrinal or ceremonial limitations other than those of 
Jesus the Christ as found both in his words and in the Apostolic 
Church :—Suppose Primitive Christianity ¢hus revived! This 
would be venascent Christianity ; the world of sin and sorrow 
would soon again be “turned upside down,” the “ poor ” would 
“have the Gospel preached unto them,” and the Kingdom of God 
would begin again to come. 


A denominational paper of this date, representing one of the 
largest of the Protestant Sects, has the following: “ Bureaus of 
Clerical Supply are being called for: but let no church imagine 
that, through such agencies, it is going to get a first-class minister 
at a fourth class salary.” 

A fourth-class salary t “What then? Is the reward of virtue ”— 
Salary! Is “the measure of the man”—J/oney! Has Chris- 
tianity come to this ! 


350 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
a ee 

In debased Politics, in degenerate Society, in degraded Commerce, 
in demoralizing Literature, and in deteriorating Art of course the 
mercenary spirit prevails ; but every noble-souled philanthropist 
deeply deplores its existence even here. How much more so 
when that highest and holiest thing named Religion, in its high- 
est and holiest form named Christianity is deteriorated, demoral- 
ized, degraded, degenerated, debased to such a degree as is 
indicated by the prevalent practice as well as by the public 
proclamation,—“ Let no Church imagine that it is going to get a 
first-class Minister at a fourth-class salary.” 


To the present age, also, apply the words of Milton : 


“ Enow of such, as for their bellies’ sake 
Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
Of other care they little reck’ning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least 
That to the faithful herdsman’s art belongs ; 
What recks it them? What need they? 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
But, swoln with wind, 4 


The base Commercialism of our age stops at nothing. Noth- 
ing is too high or too holy for its irreverent trampling in the 
dust,—the dust of Sordid Gain. One sees, for instance, flaming 
advertisements of Red Cross Tobacco, with a figure of the blood- 
stained Cross as trademark ; of Trinity Bicycles, etc. One hears 
of projects for still more astoundingly irreverent advertisement— 
too irreverent to be written here. 

How shamefully in keeping with all this mercenary spirit of 
the age (and of the ages) is the common talk about First-Class 
Ministers at First-Class Salaries, Fourth-Class Ministers at Fourth- 
Class Salaries, Churches for the Rich and Churches for the Poor, 
etc? 

And not only the common ¢a/z but the common practice as 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 351 


well. The “tables of the money changers ” hedging up the aisles 
of Cathedrals, and the jingling of coin, mingling with the voices 
of sensational choirs, indicate that the “ House of Prayer’ has 
again become “a den of thieves.” Pew-renters and pew-owners 
frown out of their pews and away from their vicinity all whose 
garments are not costly and fashionable. “ Pay your money and 
take your choice” is the rule of the Sanctuary as it is of the 
Theatre or the Circus. The xo pay no Gospel system in general 
prevails in all the “leading ” Protestant as well as Roman Catho- 
lic Churches. Should Jesus and his Apostles, or the blessed 
Mary and the other Marys, in their rustic or out-of-fashion garbs, 
approach the door of the average “Christian” Church saying, 
“Silver and gold have I none,” they (if zwcogntto) would surely 
be repulsed by that “respect of persons” which the Epistle of 
St. James so pointedly rebukes; “Stand thou there or sit here 
under my footstool.”—Stand by the door, or sit in the meanest 
seat which may chance to remain vacant; or, better still, “ At- 
tend the Mission” or go to the “ Missionary Service’ where no 
offence will be given to the “ Upper Classes.” Such is the folicy 
of the “leading” churches and the ¢act of the “ prominent ” 
Clergy. The old Gospel invitation, ‘without money and with- 
out price,” from the fourth century downward has been increas- 
ingly ignored. The poor widow with her two mites, and Lazarus 
in his penury find no welcome as fellow-worshippers with Dives 
and the chief Pharisees of to-day, more than they found in the 
Temple or in the Synagogues of nineteen centuries ago. Then 
the Divine Man began to cry, and his loyal followers for three 
centuries continued the cry, “Let him that hath no money 
come!” But now the Gospel has become a matter of merchan- 
dise: He that Zath money, let 42m come !—sounds from the 
doors and pulpits of all the “leading” Churches; while the 
“prominent ” Clergy, as “first-class ministers on first-class 
salaries” bid “him that hath no money” go, with other publi- 
cans and sinners, to the Missionary Service or to the Mission ! 


““One place there is—beneath the Burial Sod, 
Where all mankind are equalized by death ; 
Another place should be—the Fane of God, 
Where all are equal who draw human breath.” 


cy: RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


XXIV.—‘‘ ON, HONOR, HONEST.” 
(Jilustrative of the above section and of pages 87-95 and 323-329.) 


These, as someone has wittily and wisely said, are the three 
main stages in the life of the average man,—whose “chief aim 


is to glorify Sef and to enjoy Himself forever.” 

First of all, by hook or crook, get on; by fair means or foul, 
get on ; without regard to the happiness or well-being of others, 
get on ; without heed to Law or Gospel, Conscience, or the Al- 
mighty Himself, get on. 

Having succeeded in this, your money—by purchase or bribe, 
by benevolent gifts or pious endowments—will enable you to get 
honor. Then “join” the synagogue or the church—better still the 
temple or the cathedral—faithfully attend its services, generously 
support its officials and dignitaries ; thus—all the past being for- 
gotten—you will get honest. “With all your getting” get on, 
honor, honest ! 

So preaches Mr. Worldly-Wiseman ; Seek ye first all these things, 
and the Kingdom of Heaven (no matter about the “ righteousness’) 
will be added! And so practice the overwhelming majorities. 


“ Wide ts the gate and broad the way . . . and many there 
be that go in thereat.” 


“ But Wisdom shows a narrow path, 
With here and there a traveller.” 


XXV.—GRADUAL EXTENSION OF ‘‘ THE REAL PRESENCE” AS A 


DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH. 
(See pages 64 to 70 and 297-303.) 


The sect of Christians known as Roman Catholics are gradually 
extending the doctrine of the “real presence” to include the 
Blessed Mary. Various reliable journals of recent date publish 
the following : 


po Bie , a German Catholic theologian, declares that we maintain the 
co-presence of Mary in the Eucharist. We believe that in the elements the 
presence of Mary is complete, that she exists there entirely, body and soul.”’ 


It is a sensuous and quite unspiritual way of stating it, and yet 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 353 
et cea ee ee Ie Pe Se UE ae 
it is a feeble glimmering of a most glorious and fundamental 
truth :—the “ Real Presence ” not only of the Omnipresent God 
but also of all His “ministering angels,” whom that shining 
Collect of the Communion Office names, “ the blessed company 
of all faithful people.’’ 

Such limited and superstitious recognitions of this great truth 
are, after all, better than no recognition at all. To have one 
holy spot, the church or the sanctuary; to have one sacred 
thing, the altar or that which is upon the altar; and to have one 
realized Divine Presence ¢here or in that, and to extend that 
Presence to include even one or two of the “innumerable com- 
pany of angels,’—the “‘ great cloud of witnesses with which we 
are compassed,’’—surely this is an advance upon that Jower than 
“heathen” condition which recognizes no holy spot, no sacred 
thing, no Divine Presence in all the Universe. 

Let ever-widening Intelligence and ever-growing Spirituality 
take fast hold of this fundamental (but grossly misconceived and 
much abused) teaching of Religion “pure and undefiled,” and 
extend it into the everywhere and always Real Presence of 
God, and of Jesus the Christ, and of the Blessed Mary, and of 
the “ Blessed Company of All Faithful People.” So shall the 
world gradually come to the glorious recognition of every day as 
a Holy Day, of every place as a Sanctuary, of every thing as an 
Altar, of every act as a Eucharist, of every thought as a Real 
Presence, and of every aspiration as a Communion of Saints. 

“ And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and 
the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascena- 
ing and descending on tt. 

‘And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the 
Lord ts tn this place ; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and 
said, How dreadful ts this place! this ts none other but the house 
of God, and this ts the gate of heaven.’’ 


XXVI.—‘‘ THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT 
THE TRUTH.” 


(Jllustrative of the entire volume.) 


The common objection to all attempts to find and state “the 
Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth” is: This is 


354 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 

ict eI a ca MIEN VO Cane nde N ea a aL i dS EE 
an ideal, and the masses of the people cannot comprehend zdeals ; 
or, this is pure gold, and for common use we must have alloy. 
To which we answer: Very well, zz case we do not insist upon 
affirming that the low or lowered teaching is the zdea/—the Truth 
“ orthodox,” infallible and final: and do not proceed to perse- 
cute or to oppose those who cannot be satisfied with anything 
less than the “ whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.” Very 
well, 27 case we honestly label our alloy as so many carats fine (no 
more, no less) and do not insist upon putting or keeping it on 
the market as gold pure and unalloyed. Jesus said openly and 
plainly : I speak to you in parables decause your ears are dull, 
your eyes are closed and your heart is waxed gross : but to those 
who are willing to understand me I speak the highest Truths, and 
whosoever hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

Paul said, with similar openness and plainness : Milk for babes, 
but meat for men; I feed you with milk decause ye are and per- 
sist in remaining babes, though ye ought by this time (many of 
you) to be men, and so able to bear meat. } 

And the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, in other words, 
repeats the frequent reproof of Jesus and of Paul: 

“We have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing 
ye are dull of hearing. 

“ For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need 
that one teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God ; 
and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong 
meat. 

“For every one that useth milk zs unskilful in the word of 
righteousness : for he is a babe. 

“But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even 
those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern 
both good and evil.” 

No teacher of the Bible, or of any other form of genuine Re- 
ligion, ever Jowers his Ideal or ad/oys his Gold except as a dempo- 
rary accommodation of it to the intellectual stupidity, or to the 
spiritual grossness, of those whom he seeks to teach. And, 
even then, he always carefully explains that he is speaking in 
parables or administering milk. Never does he indicate or 
intimate that his parables are Aéghest Truth, or that his milk is 
meat,—that his Jowered presentation of the Truth is the zdea/, or 
that his a/oy is the pure Gold. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. Shr 

i SE an a RT is Nl te cr af AP at cal A ec 

Again and again, with his divine Master does he say, “this 

people’s ears are dull, their eyes are heavy, their hearts are 

gross,” and, again and again, with him does he explain, “I have 
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them zow.’’ 


The author of this volume will here add that, though he be- 
lieves there is nothing in these pages so obscurely stated that “a 
wayfaring man, though a fool, weed err therein ”—yet has he not 
prepared it for, nor does he offer it to, the unquestioning, un- 
aspiring masses. 

Only for those who are striving to become “men” and are 
not contented to remain “ babes,”—those who are teachable, that 
is, willing to know, anxious to know, hungering and thirsting 
to know “the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth,”—only 
for these has this volume been prepared ; and to these it is re- 
spectfully and humbly submitted. 


‘“ To this end was I born, and for this cause came Tinto the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the Truth. Every one that 
ts of the Truth heareth my voice. . . If ye continue in my word, 
then are ye my disciples tndeed ; and ye shall know the Truth, and 
the Truth shall make you free.’’ 


¢ 


XXVII.—FREE CHURCHES AND THE GOSPEL “ WITHOUT PRICE.” 
(An Open Profession.) 


By maternal ancestry the author is a “ birth-right member” of 
the Society of (Progressive) Friends. From early teachings as 
well as from inheritance came a strong sense of the Anti-New 
Testament and hence Anti-Christian nature of a marketable 
Priesthood, called by the Society of Friends a Aéreling Ministry. 
Paternal influence, however, and education among the Orthodox 
Sects led to considerations of pecuniary advantage and a gradual 
suppression of the Inner Voice. “Woe is to me if I preach not 
the Gospel” was a conviction of even boyhood days, but mer- 
cenary motives warped it into conformity with the popular and 
prevailing methods. The result was an experiencc of nearly 


356 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 


fifteen years as Pastor of pew-renting Churches in which the 
salary was Jargained for and the Gospel preached at marketable 
prices. During all these years, however, sympathetic relations 
were maintained with the Society of Friends and frequent par- 
ticipation in their reverent and spiritual worship. But the time 
at length came when maturely considered convictions made it 
impossible, in peace or in honor, to continue a professtonal Priest 
or a Aireling Minister. By no means does the author undertake 
to say that all professional Priests are mercenary. ‘There are, 
as there always have been, self-sacrificing and martyr-spirited 
men, noble and true, among the Priesthood of every form of Re- 
ligion—Brahministic, Buddhistic, Moslem, or that of other Pagan 
names as well as of the Jews and Christians. But they are, or 
have been, noble and true zm sfite of the system and not as its 
product. The system, ever and everywhere, is debasing in its 
nature and degenerating in its results. As such Jesus and his 
Apostles opposed it; withdrew from it ; and organized a Church 
in which every sanctified member might be both prophet and 
priest, preaching and ministering for the pure love of God and 
man, without Jargain as to money or price. “The Son of Man 
came to minister and not to be ministered unto.” “I have coveted 
no man’s silver or gold.” “I seek not yours, but you.” 

Voluntary and “cheerful” contributions for the needful suste- 
nance of those who devote their entire lives to the service of the 
Gospel is, indeed, a New Testament and Apostolic requirement. 
But any form of exaction or of stipulation, such as taxes or rentals 
of seats, admissions charged or solicited, the rich seated high and 
the poor seated low, or even formal collections as a part of 
public Worshif—all these are utterly antagonistic to the teach- 
ings and spirit of the New Testament. 

As the poor widow, commended by Jesus, quietly and gladly 
cast her mites into the treasury az the entrance of the Temple, so 
should every Christian—letting not the left hand know what the 
right is doing and permitting neither priest, nor minister, nor 
other official to ask How much will you give? Every man’s own 
conscience is his own and only prompter and judge in all matters 
of Christian charity. And every Minister of the Gospel should 
uncomplainingly accept, as his means of livelihood, whatever 
those to whom he ministers, without bargaining or constraint, 
may cheerfully and quietly offer. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. a¥ely 


With this understanding of Christianity the author fully re- 
solved some fifteen years ago, and as Rector has unceasingly 
kept the resolve, to minister to those willing to accept /ree 
Churches and the Gospel w#thout price, as Jesus and his Apostles, 
according to the New Testament records, organized and ordained 
them. Such bodies of Christians best represent “the true 
Church” whether derisively called Quakers or whatever. And 
such is the Apostolic Ministry though it minister in a “ meeting 
house,” or (as in the early centuries) by the seaside, or on a 
mountain, or in an upper room, or in a private dwelling. 


“ Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, 
when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship 
the Father. . . The hour cometh, and now is, when the true 
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for 
such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a 
Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit 
and truth.” 

“The church in the wilderness ”—“ the church that is in their 
house ’—“if the church be come together into one place ”— 
“salute the church that is in Nympha’s house ”—“ Paul a pris- 
oner to the church in thy house.” 


“I thought it necessary therefore to entreat the brethren, that 
they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your 
bounty that the same might be ready, as a matter of bounty, and 
not of our covetousness. 

“But this Z say, He that soweth sparingly shall reap also 
sparingly ; and he that soweth with blessings shall reap also 
with blessings, Let each man do according as he hath purposed 
in his heart : not grudgingly, or of necessity : for God loveth a 
cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound unto 
you; that ye, having always all sufficiency in everything, may 
abound unto every good work: as it is written. 

“He hath scattered abroad, he hath given to the poox ; 

“His righteousness abideth for ever.” 


358 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


XXVIII.—THE ‘“‘ ESTABLISHED ORDER”’ AND THE “ PROTESTANTS,” 
(Lilustrative of Pages 257-263.) 


From the Romanists down, it is practically true of all the secés, 
to-day as ever, that the “liberty” they grant to those who ques- 
tion their dogmas is of the same kind as that which the Puritans 
of Massachusetts granted to Roger Williams and the Quakers ; 
“We grant them entire liberty to keep as far away from us as 
possible, and if any of them are among us to be gone as quickly 
as they can.” The main difference is that formerly this “liberty ” 
was backed with sword and fagot, but now with ecclesiastical 
stigma and social scorn. 

History confirms what science proves, that in any living or- 
ganism, an established order soon results in deterioration and decay. 
Whatever settles down upon a fixed and final basis, physically, 
intellectually, or spiritually, begins to die. No living thing can 
be to-day exactly as it was yesterday, or will be to-morrow, with- 
out stagnation—and stagnation is incipient death. Hence, who- 
soever with honesty, intelligence and love combined protests 
against the established order is a friend and not an enemy. 

The protester has ever been the pioneer. Those whom the 
established order has ever mistaken and persecuted as dissenters 
and heretics have been the appointed prophets of God to lead 
the world not only out of Egypt, across the Red Sea, and znto 
the “wilderness of Sinai,” but also through it to the Promised 
Land. Unless the “trumpets of silver” be sounded and the 
“order of march” followed the old and oft-repeated misery will 
result ; “Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness, and your 
children shall wander in the wilderness forty years.” 

No soft-toned priest or smooth-tongued prophet ever availed 
except to bring up “an evil report of the land” and to persuade 
the people to remain encamped in the wilderness ; nay, even to 
urge them dackward, saying, “ Let us make a captain, and let us 
return into Egypt.” Zhey are the real enemies,—the veal dis- 
senters and infidels—not the Calebs and Joshuas who disquiet 
the people by saying, “It is an exceedingly good land: let us go 
up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it.” 

Against the soft-toned priests and smooth-tongued prophets the 
Divine rebukes have ever sounded forth ; and whosoever faith- 
fully reiterates these rebukes does God’s service—however much 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 359 
eee ate eat RR GRE EMA tk ASL VE 8 See dl MEER RL Re ie it 
he may be hated as an “ agitator” and a “ disturber of the public 
peace.” 

True to the Gospel as well as to the Law, to the New Testa- 
ment pictures as well as to the Old—however poetically incom- 
plete—is a poem written just one hundred years ago, from which 
a few lines may here be appropriately added. 


“THE SMOOTH DIVINE.” 
(Lines by the President of Vale College, 1797.) 


‘* Placed in some great town with lacquered shoes, 
Trim wig, and trimmer gown, and glistening hose, 
He bowed, talked politics, learned manners mild, 
Most meekly questioned, and most smoothly smiled. 


Most daintily on pampered turkeys dined, 
Nor shrunk with fasting, nor with study pined. 


No terrors on his gentle tongue attend, 
No grating truths the nicest-ear offend. 


Twas best, he said, mankind should cease to sin : 
Good fame required it ; so did peace within. 

Their honors, well he knew, would ne’er be driven: 
But hoped they still] would please to go to Heaven.” 


XXIX.—-SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS. 


(Contributed by the author and here republished as tllustrative of those 
extremes against which this volume ts a warning. See espe- 


cially pages 79-89.) 
1.— Scylla. 


“To the Editors of the Daily Eagle : 

“* Catholicism’ means toleration and inclusiveness in religion. 
‘A Catholic’ is one who tolerates all intelligently honest religious 
convictions, and includes rather than excludes them. For any 
one of the various Christian sects to name itself ‘The Catholic 
Church,’ and to presume to address all the other sects as ‘ Non- 
Catholics’ is a piece of impudence which it is high time was 
resented with mingled pity and scorn—pity for the ignorance and 
scorn for the bigotry. 

“With spoken and published appeals to ‘ Non-Catholics’ for 
a week or more past, a representative of the Roman Catholic sect 


360 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


of Christians has been telling the Protestant sects of this city 
about their errors as to the true Christian faith, Through long 
reports in one of the newspapers and shorter reports in some 
others, these errors have been made public, backed with illogical 
and Scripture-perverting statements in the form of arguments. 
Of course when one appeals to Czesar, to Ceesar he should go. 
These appeals to the public demand public answer, unless indeed 
the Protestants accept them as truth and are ready to go over in 
a body to Romanism. Through the columns of your entirely 
non-sectarian paper the following corrections are offered to the 
same Protestant public that has been appealed to every day for 
more than a week past, by a visitor to our city, who is published 
as a chief advocate of the ‘One and only true and infallible 
Church,’ which Protestants have always held to be, simply, one 
of the various sects of Christians, certainly no more ‘ true and in- 
fallible’ than are the other sects. One likes to be tolerant, and 
every presentation in Religion—Pagan or Christian, of the Ro- 
man sect or of any of the Protestant sects alike—should be gladly 
welcomed in so far as it is both intelligent and honest. But when 
sectarianism and priestcraft, one or both, clearly show themselves 
as the ruling motive—protruding like horns or ears through this 
seemingly innocent covering—it is time to cry out, ‘ Beware !’ 

“The sharp-eyed Taine said : ‘ Ninety-five out of a hundred, 
like sheep, blindly follow whatever leader may manage to exalt 
himself over them.’ The sharp-phrased Milton said, and Dante 
long before, ‘The sheep come home wind-fed and swollen.’ The 
sharper-eyed, sharper-phrased Carlyle said: ‘So many millions, 
mostly fools!’ The fact that not more than ‘ five out of a hun- 
dred’ have yet even begun to think for themselves in religion (or 
hardly in anything else requiring logical or intellectual insight) 
makes charlatanry easy and enables quackery, pretension, and 
priestcraft to widely and persistently prevail. 

‘In your columns for several days past you have kindly given 
space to long reports of the mission sermons which have been 
preached in one of the city churches. Everyone must thank you 
for this entire non-partizanship which grants an equal hearing to 
all religious sects alike. The practical parts of these sermons 
have been admirable and truly Christian. But the doctrinal 
parts have been entirely in defence or in advocacy of the Roman 
sect. These parts, too, would have been interesting and com- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 361 


mendable had they been either logical or Scriptural. Surely 
there must be ‘ five out of a hundred’ of your readers who were 
intelligent enough to see how utterly un-Scriptural they were, and 
to comprehend that their main purpose was not to make converts 
to the religion of the Bible, but to the Roman Catholic sect. In 
every sermon as reported, this main purpose protrudes ; and the 
Scriptures are “ wrested,’ and twisted, and tortured for the further- 
ing of this main purpose. In one sermon the ‘ verbal infallibility’ 
of the Bible is denied in order to enforce the necessity of an ‘in- 
fallible church.’ In the next, isolated texts of Scripture are torn 
from their contexts, and from the whole consension of Bible 
teachings, and forced to do service in support of some contro- 
verted dogma or ritual. 

“To take an example from only one reported sermon, that of 
October 22d. Here the false logic as well as the false use of 
Scripture are easily exposed. As to the latter: The dogma of 
an infallible church with (or through) its infallible Pope is argued 
from one short text, nowhere confirmed, but everywhere contra- 
dicted, in every other portion of the Bible. The dogma of the 
confessional (that importation from Paganism, which is a star- 
chamber and a hypnotic-s¢éance combined) is argued from a simi- 
lar solitary text, ‘if we confess our sins,’ etc. This text is no 
more applicable to the confessional of the Romanists than to the 
class meeting of the Methodists, or the prayer meeting or con- 
ference meeting of any of the other Protestant sects. Indeed 
far less ; for elsewhere it is constantly explained by such texts as 
“confess before men’—‘confess one to another’—‘ confess to 
God,’ and nowhere is frzvate confession even hinted in the whole 
Bible. 

“What “wayfaring man, though a fool,’ may not see how false 
and designing is such logic as this >—‘ As the governor of a state 
must be approached for favors through his appointed agents, so 
men must approach to God through the confessional which 
Christ has established.’ First, we ask, When, and how did Christ 
establish it ? Second, If the ‘ governor of a state’ were omnipresent, 
—equally and always in every house, in every heart, as is He “who 
is not far from every one of us,’ who is indeed, as Christ himself 
taught, ‘within us,’ the Omnipresent ‘Spirit’ whom all in every 
place alike should ‘worship in spirit and in truth ’—if the ‘ gov- 
ernor of a state’ were such an one, what a fool as well as tyrant 


362 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


he would be to require or even to permit all to approach him for 
favors only ‘through his appointed agents?’ What a protest to 
all such teachings is the whole Bible. ‘Come and let us reason 
together,’ saith the Lord. ‘The Father seeketh such to worship 
Him.’ ‘Let us come boldly to the Throne of Grace.’ As one 
has well exclaimed, breathing out the very life of Christ and 
vitality of the New Testament: “Medium or messenger betwixt 
I will not have, I myself am on speaking terms with God.’ 

“Let the ministers of the Roman Catholic sect, as of the other 
sects, love their cult as much as they please; let them show its 
reason to be, and advocate its superior worth as clearly and 
strongly as they can; but let them not ‘wrest’ either Scripture 
or logic in its behalf. Plainly and fairly let them say, what their 
chief dignitaries in the high places always do say : ‘ These things 
are so, not because they are clearly taught in the Bible or are in 
accord with reason, but because the infallible and only true 
church proclaims them so.’ 

“The difficulty will be to convince people who are intelligent, 
in these growingly intelligent ages, of the reality of this last ‘ be- 
cause.’ This accepted, all the rest will readily follow. 


‘* A CLERGYMAN,” 
“ October 22, ’97.” 


ADDENDUM. 
“October 23, 1897. 


“On the principle that ‘the partaker is as bad as the thief,’ a 
newspaper that publishes any inadequate or misleading state- 
ment, especially on so sacred a subject as Religion, is guilty if it 
does not also and with equal hospitality publish any honest and 
intelligent correction that may be proffered. The Zag/e is not, 
of course, a partizan paper, and so its columns are understood to 
be equally open to both sides and to all sides. 

“Again in this morning’s report of last evening’s mission ser- 
mon appeared the same ‘wresting’ of texts. Let any intelligent 
non-sectarian take the sixth chapter of St. John’s Gospel and read 
it through, not omitting, as the preacher has done, those marvel- 
lously explanatory verses, 60 to 64, and he can no more draw 
from it any dogma of ‘the real flesh and blood presence,’ than he 
could from any book in his library, or any letters from his dear- 
est friend whose contents (the writer’s or author’s ‘body and 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 363 


blood’) he ‘eats and drinks,’ z. ¢., eagerly consumes and feeds 
upon. The preacher (in the reported sermon) stops as the Jews 
did (whose stupid materialistic interpretation he accepts as the 
true one) just where the explanation of it all begins: ‘It is the 
spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing ; the words that 
I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.’ His spiritual 
presence then was the promised one, and his ‘words,’ his teach- 
ings, or his truths were the ‘meat indeed’ and the ‘ drink indeed’ 
(the very ‘flesh and blood’ of the soul), of which all must par- 
take in order to ‘have life in’ them, and thus be prepared to 
‘live forever.’ As he elsewhere says of himself, ‘My meat (and 
my drink) is to do the will of Him that sent me,’ and again, ‘I 
have meat to eat that ye know not of.’ The will of God and the 
truth of God he ate and drank, and his ‘blessed sacrament’ 
means that we shall do the same. How simple and plain is even 
this, the most mysterious teaching of the Bible, when studied 
with the light of reason as well as the light of grace! And how 
dark and dead is all when, for sectarian or selfish purposes, ‘The 
letter which killeth’ is substituted for ‘the spirit which giveth 
life.’ 

“In the degenerate ages of the Classic Religions we find the 
superstitious and unreasoning masses under the degrading tyr- 
anny of a powerful and magnificent system of Hierophants with 
an ‘infallible’ Pontifex Maximus at their head, (whose true imita- 
tors as well as successors are the Priesthood and Pope of modern 
Romanism) celebrating, as their most sacred ceremony and chief 
sacrament of Religion, “the real presence of the flesh and blood 
of Ceres and Bacchus.’ Ceres, the classic name for corn, and 
Bacchus for wine had first become personified as beautiful figures 
of speech; then they grew into real personalities ; then priest- 
craft transformed them into deities, with stories of miraculous 
birth, sufferings, deaths, resurrection and ascension ; then came 
Hieromancy, ending in the ‘awful mystery and saving sacra- 
ment’ of eating cakes and drinking wine as ‘the veritable body 
and blood of the Goddess Ceres and the God Bacchus.’ So does 
History still repeat itself and the masses of mankind still yield to 
the tyranny of Self-exalting Powers which ‘ desire to have them 
that they sift them as wheat.’ 

“ Still stands Scylla, deeply planted and dangerously hidden, in the 
midway. “THE SAME CLERGYMAN.” 


304 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 
2.—Charybdis. 


“ To the Editor of the Daily News-Press: 

“Chancing to be at leisure last evening I was one of a large audi- 
ence who listened while the great American apostle of Agnosticism 
told us‘ What we must do to be saved.’ There was a great deal of 
wit and eloquence in the lecture, and much timely rebuke to minis- 
ters, theologians, and churches of the traditional or non-inquir- 
ing sort. But when the lecturer opened the Bible and began to 
explain it, he sadly displayed both his little knowledge of that 
book, and his lack of spiritual comprehension. ‘Shoemaker, 
stick to your last,’ I constantly felt like calling out to him. He 
knows as much about the Bible and Religion in their spiritual 
meaning as the average clergyman does of Law Books and the 
interpretation of Law. To talk about them in general and to 
sharply rebuke bigots and hypocrites (of whom there are indeed 
many both in pulpits and pews) was well enough. But to ex- 
pound the Bible or to explain that loftiest spiritual Truth we 
call Religion, alas, ‘what a fall was there, my countrymen!’ 
One could fairly hear the devils laugh and the angels weep. 
Mr. is admirable as a speaker and in his personality: a 
magnificent specimen of manhood, if he would only ‘stick to 
his last.’ 

“His constant proposition was: ‘If there be a God, man can 
neither help nor hinder, benefit, nor harm Him.’ Evidently he has 
in mind the God of the child and the savage—an infinite Man, who 
exists entirely apart from the Universe and unaffected by anything 
that may happen toit. With such a God men might indeed beautify 
and perfect the earth or deface and defile it, might elevate and 
glorify human-kind or degrade and destroy, without either pleasing 
or displeasing, helping or hindering, benefiting or harming Him. 
But any reasoning about such a God is too superficial and child- 
ish to be listened to, with any patience, by those who comprehend 
and accept the teachings of the Bible, as of all lofty Religions, 
concerning God as Omnipresent ; that is, imminent in all Crea- 
tion. God zz man, as 7 all living things, sorrowing in his sor- 
rows, rejoicing in his joys, concerned with all his concerns; 
helped or hindered, benefited or harmed by His co-workers all. 
We then as workers together with God is a teaching the philosophy 
of which the lecturer seemed never to have considered. 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 365 


“He told us about the God whose existence he doubted, the 
Christ whom he said he did not believe ever lived, the Bible, 
which is a hodge-podge of fiction ; the Soul, which is only ani- 
mated flesh and blood, and the Life Everlasting, which is only 
Everlasting Nothingness. ‘To be saved’ is to eat and drink and 
have a good time, and not to hinder others from doing the same, 
to-day, and leave to-morrow to take care of itself. ‘ Heaven’ 
is to have a good digestion, with ‘a penny in your pocket and 
a pigeon in the pot.’ ‘Hell’ is the abode of all who are sharp- 
witted and wise, and ‘hell-fire’ is nothing but the scintillations 
of genius. Not that the lecturer used all these exact terms, but 
suggested them as the substance of all he had to say. 

“ His condemnation of all existing Religions and of everything 
that might be called Faith was wholesale and entire. His 
ridicule was, ‘Quintessence pure sprung from the deep’ ;—the 
‘deep’ being the scoffings of all sharp-tongued satirists from 
those of most ancient times down to Rabelais and Voltaire. Satire 
and ridicule have their place ; and when used as scourges for the 
back of persistent hypocrisy, or of unblushing knavery, or of un- 
yielding superstition or stupidity, are as divine as any others of 
the ‘angels’ of God. But when used merely or chiefly to force 
the laugh, secure applause and fill the speaker’s or writer’s pocket 
with cash, we must think approvingly of the Bible phrases : ‘The 
tongue is set on fire of Hell,’ and “blessed is the man that 
sitteth not in the seat of the scorner.’ So thought the writer, as 
he listened to much that this chief apostle of agnosticism had to 
say. His sharpest stings were for “mercenary ’ priests and other 
ministers who serve the Hierarchy or conform to Orthodoxy for 
praise or pay. These stings are needed and widely deserved ; 
but ‘thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou 
steal?’ No hireling priest or time-serving minister could more 
plainly revel in the applause of his constituents. And, as for 
‘pay, this chief apostle of agnosticism has derived ‘no small 
gain’ from his apostleship, plying his craft so sharply that no. 
‘Mistakes of Moses’ or ‘What shall I do to be saved’ can be 
heard except ‘at theatre prices,’ or read except at the most 
profitable rates of the pamphlet venders and of the book-markets, 
When ‘the poor have the gospel’ of agnosticism preached to 
them ‘without price,’ as they had the gospel of Jesus preached to 
them during the first and second centuries, then there will be a 


366 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


chance (but not till then) for these modern ‘setters forth of 
strange gods’ not only to escape their own sharp stings of sar- 
casm as to love of ‘praise and pay,’ but also to ‘turn the world 
upside down,’ and send forth their ‘new doctrine,’ everywhere 
‘conquering and to conquer.’ 

“The lecturer’s favorite figure came in again near the close 
—the masterpiece of his rhetoric of agnosticism. Humanity 
in a ship whose invisible captain and invisible crew no one has 
ever seen, tossing on an unknown sea, no one knows whither or 
why ! 

“Then and there my soul rose to a rhythmic mood and, pro- 
testingly, said : 


This life is a voyage—not meaningless sport— 

Of which Time is the ocean, and Heaven the port ; 
Our invisible Captain and invisible crew 

We confidingly trust in to pilot us through. 


“So does History still repeat itself and the ‘ Adversary as a 
roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour.’ 
“ Sull stands Charybdis, deeply planted and dangerously hidden, 


an the midway. 
“ ‘* A CLERGYMAN.” 


XXX.—-THE RULING MOTIVE. 


(Recent Lllustrations.) 


Two brothers equally talented, pious and devout, but one an 
Honor-seeker and the other a Truth-seeker, stand together at the 
dividing of the way. The choice of Heracles, of Moses, of Jesus, 
of Paul,istoberepeated. Atthe entrance of the dread way stands 
the invisible Tempter who whispers, “ All these things will I give 
thee” if thou wilt choose this way. At the entrance of the zar- 
row way stands invisible Truth who cries aloud, “If ye were 
of the world, the world would love his own—if they have perse- 
cuted me they will also persecute you—in the world ye shall have 
tribulation.” 

The brothers separate, one to find the welcomes, praises and 
rewards of arich and magnificent ecclesiastical sovereignty await- 
ing him at every step, and to die, at last, in what the world calls 
the “Odor of Sanctity ”’; the other to meet with scorn, detrac- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 367 


tion and hatred—to experience the common lot of every hero of 
History and to die, at last, on the cross of popular reprobation. 
This one indeed drank of the cup that his Master drank of, while 
the other seated himself at the imaginary right hand of a fictitious 
Messianic Potentate. Of him who voluntarily became “a man of 
sorrow and acquainted with grief,” thus choosing and persistently 
retaining the “narrow path,” it is written : 

‘When the time came for him to take his degree of Master of 
Arts he could not conscientiously sign the Thirty-nine Articles, a 
step which then and long afterward was of course indispensable. 
It is characteristic of him that he does not seem to have hesitated 
about his course. He threw up his Fellowship and all his brilliant 
prospects rather than make any compromise with his conscience, 
and left Oxford forever. His brother, who by this time had been 
completely converted to priestly doctrines, cut him off from all 
private friendship and acquaintance, thereby severing him from 
other members of his family who were living with him. One by 
one all those with whom he had previously held converse turned 
against him and ceased to acknowledge him as a friend.” 

Let us leave these two brothers in the hands of that Omniscient 
Judge who “is a discerner of the thoughts and intent of the 
heart” ; and who inspired His Christ to say, “‘ Many that are 
first shall be last and last that shall be first—Rejoice and be ex- 
ceeding glad when all men hate you and speak evil of you for 
great is your reward in Heaven.” 

Of one thing at least we may be certain: that no genuine lover 
of Truth, from the beginning till now, has ever failed to hear and 
to cheerfully accept the forewarnings of the Divine Voice, “I will 
show thee how great things thou must suffer for my name’s sake.” 
Such are, or become, the “Catholic Churchmen” who sing ever 
of their missions and their creed : 


“March on, my soul, nor like a laggard stay ! 
March swiftly on! Yet err not from the way 
Where all the nobly wise of old have trod,— 
The path of faith made by the sons of God. 


“ Something to learn and something to forget ; 
Hold fast the good, and seek the better yet ; 
Press on, and prove the pilgrim-hope of youth,— 
That Creeds are milestones on the road to Truth.” 


368 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


A still more recent illustration, and on a broader or more in- 
clusive scale, is furnished by the self-forgetting career of one who 
has just fallen as a martyr at his post. Representive of no Party, 
either in politics or in religion: tied to no System, merely be- 
cause it was traditional, ancient, or popular; a simple lover 
of Truth, and ever advocating it bravely without thought of con- 
sequences to himself ; throwing all that he had into the cause of 
righteousness, “and not deeming that enough, throwing himself” 
—he died on the field of battle and in the thickest of the fight, as 
leader of a long-struggling and much-despised minority, waging 
unflinching warfare against the oppressive Traditionalisms of the 
world as mightily entrenched in the great metropolis of America. 

From his funeral orations, spoken by brave non-partisans who 
are possessed of his own martyr spirit, a few scattered sentences 
are here republished. 

“He flung himself into life. He identified himself with those 
whose wrongs he suffered as keenly as if they had been his own. 
He interpreted them through his own feelings. He loved truth, 
but he loved it most because it served mankind. To the eradi- 
cation of all wrongs by what seemed to him to be a clear and 
sure remedy he gave himself with a simple consecration and faith 
worthy of all praise, worthy of all emulation.” 

“Whether or not we accept his methods as the best of all 
methods for accomplishing this, we must honor the life that was 
so consecrated. Not to attend church or synagogue: not to sub- 
scribe to creeds, social or religious: not to belong to organiza- 
tions, industrial or so-called Christian—not any of these things 
make one a follower of Christ. To give one’s self to the teach- 
ing of the poor, to the uplifting of the common people, to the over- 
throw of every form of wrong and injustice, to establish the 
kingdom of righteousness and peace—and no peace without 
righteousness—this is to follow Christ.” 

“He might have had any position in political life or in jour- 
nalism that he choose, if he had been willing to compromise a 
little with his convictions.” 

‘“‘He never, I believe, thought what would be the effect on him- 
self of anything he uttered. I have stood beside him on the same 
platform and have heard him speak truths that were unwelcome, 
and which seemed to me to be needlessly unwelcome. I have 
read every book he has written, and have found in them unwel- 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 369 
Ee ee TE eh, PC pe 
come truths, uttered with no corner ground off, no sharp edges 
planed away. It would be difficult to find a public teacher in 
America who thought less of the effect upon himself and more of 
the effect upon others.” 

“He went forth to seek the Truth, and when he found her he 
accepted her, and told her message in language simple, plain, with 
the conviction of his own mind shining through it as light through 
a glass. He was never deterred from telling what he conceived 
to be true. He declared his message no matter what it struck or 
what was the effect. God, in His order, has established it that 
honesty will never fail of its reward. Time that tries all things 
will separate the dust from the gold. An honest utterance will 
fall upon thousands of minds, and awake aspirations to go and 
do likewise.” 


XXXI.—BELIEFS, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL, 
(For the Renascent Christianity of the 20th Century.) 


I.—THEORETICAL BELIEFS, 


I BELIEVE in God ;—‘“ The Lord our God is one Lord, and 
there is none other but He; The one God and Father of all, 
Who is above all, and through all, and in us all.” 

I BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit ;—“ The Spirit of God that bears 
witness with our spirits that we are the children of God.” 

I BELIEVE in Jesus the Christ ;—“Son of the living God; 
Teacher come from God, who spake not his own words, but the 
words which he had learned of the Father ; Who was tempted in 
all points like as we are; Who learned obedience by the things 
which he suffered, and, being made perfect, became the revealer 
of eternal salvation unto all that follow him.” 

I BELieve in the Bible ;—And that “ Every Scripture inspired 
of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, 
and for instruction in righteousness.” 

I BELieve in the Church Catholic and Universal :—“ God’s 
Household of Faith,” the accepted members of which are “ All in 
every nation who fear God and work righteousness.” 

I BELIEVE in the Immortality of the soul ;—‘In our Father’s 
house there are many mansions. Flesh and blood cannot inherit 
the kingdom of God but this mortal must put on immortality ; 
And so shall death be swallowed up in victory.” 


370 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


I BevieveE that “The end of the commandment is, love out of 
a pure heart and a good conscience and a faith unfeigned ” ; And 
that “ God requireth nothing of any man but to do justly, and to 
love mercy, and walk humbly with his God.” 

I Be.reve that “No man should judge his brother, or set at 
naught his brother ; But every man should judge for himself what 
is right ; And worship God according to the dictates of his own 
conscience.” 

I Be.ieve that “God is a Spirit, and that they who worship 
him should worship Him in spirit and in truth.” 


II.—-PRACTICAL BELIEFS, 


I BELIEVE that all men and women have equal and unalienable 
rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

I BELIEVE in the Emancipation of the Poor, through the Church 
supplying the wants of the young, the sick and the aged who may 
be friendless and destitute ; and through the State providing for 
all who are able to work, encouraging opportunities and remuner- 
ative industries. 

I BELIEVE in the introduction and impartial enforcement of a 
system of Graduated Taxation, with severe penalties attached 
against all mis-statements as to the ownership of property subject 
to taxation. 

I BELIEVE in the rights of Labor to adequate compensation and 
to protection from all oppressive monopolies of Capital in Agri- 
culture, Manufacture and Trade. 

I BELIEVE in greater moderation in all Public Expenditures, 
including the reduction of all official salaries (from that of the 
chief magistrate down), to such a minimum as is appropriate to 
those alone who from purely patriotic motives accept the admin- 
istration of a democratic—as opposed to a monarchic or an aristo- 
cratic—form of government. 

I BELIEVE in Civil Service Reform, in its three applications of 
(1) reducing the number of offices of all sorts to a minimum, (2) 
filling these by merit as determined by competitive examination, 
(3) making their tenure dependent upon good conduct and effi- 
ciency of service alone. 

I BELIEVE in the enactment and rigid enforcement everywhere 
throughout our country of severe laws and penalties for the prose- 
cution and punishment of all kinds and degrees of unacknowledged 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY, 371 
SE a a a a Ee Ce NT I ON 
adulteration of Food, Liquors, Drugs and Commodities of every 
sort ; including all kinds and degrees of deception in the manu- 
facture and sale of Fabrics, Jewelry, Machineries, etc. 

I BELIEVE in the limitation and stringent regulation of the traffic 
in alcoholic liquors, and also of what is known as the “ Social 
Evil.” 

I BELIEVE in the common and equal rights of suffrage and of 
representation granted to all law-abiding citizens without regard 
to station, race, sex, or religion ; with severe penalties against all 
kinds of fraud, bribery, compulsion or undue influence with 
reference to the ballot. 

I BELIEVE in restraining crime and in reforming criminals 
—not in Revenge or in Punishment ; together with removal of 
the “ pardoning power” from all individual magistrates, and con- 
fining it to a new trial before a lawfully constituted tribunal. 

I BELIEVE in the abolition of all salaries paid by government 
to distinctively religious teachers or officials—as government chap- 
lains, instructors in sectarian schools, etc.; in the prohibition of 
endowments or appropriations to sectarian Colleges, Schools. 
Hospitals, Homes, Reformatories, Asylums, etc.; together with 
prohibition of exemption from taxation of property of azy sort, 
except that belonging to and exclusively controlled and used 
by the government for governmental, reformatory, or humane 
purposes. 

I BELIEVE that it is the sacred duty of every religious teacher 
to continually hold up before the world the lofty anticipations 
of the New Testament, viz.: The speedy establishment of the 
“ Kingdom of God,” or the speedy bringing to pass of a “ Millen- 
nium” of purity and peace upon earth ; and that in order to do 
this, every religious teacher should continually present, ot low, 
jiattering or time-serving standards of conduct, but those lofty 
ideals of the New Testament—‘ We that are strong ought to 
help the weak and not to please ourselves” ; ‘‘If one member 
suffer let all the members suffer with it 3 “ Be ye therefore 
perfect, even as your Father in heaven ts perfect.” 


XXXII.—“ REPENT YE.” 
( The closing, as it was the opening, cry of this volume.) 


Something needed to be said, and the manner of saying it was 
forgotten in its delivery. The message, not the method, seemed 


372 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


the all-important thing. And for this there is highest authority, 
No permanently effective Truth-speaker has ever stopped to 
bedeck or bedizen his Truth. Two of the most potent writers 
of the nineteenth century—the great English apostle of Rome 
and the great French apostle of Reason—have said: the first— 
““T never have been in the practice of attempting to write well. 
My one single desire and aim has been . . . to express 
clearly and exactly my meaning.” And the second—*“I am the 
least literary of writers. I would have no mention made of style. 
I study the thing and let the words come of themselves.” 
Higher authority still is that of the longest-lived, most widely 
and deeply effective writings of the world, those of the Bible; 
whose writers, all, allowed their thoughts to clothe themselves, 
in words however rough or in phrases however rude—to fastidi- 
ous eyes or ears. “Iam not eloquent,” said the chief prophet 
of the Old Testament. “Though I be rude in speech—my 
speech was not with enticing words—we use great plainness 
of speech—great is my boldness of speech,” said the chief 
apostle of the New Testament ; concerning whom the literary 
critics also said, “his speech is contemptible.’’ But the Lord 
had said, “Go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee 
what thou shalt say.” 


“Ves, he had a meaning, a conviction, which would not let 
him rest until it was embodied ; and literature as a display of 
talent, or a thing which could be sold in the market, he no more 
dreamt of dealing in than of dealing with Truth itself as a com- 
modity or an article of commerce.” 


Let whoever will stop, for sake of praise or pay, to pattern 
their sentences after the approved rules;—“ The ancestral abode 
in which you have probably passed the most delightful days of 
your life is in a state of inflammation!” etc. The author of this 
volume could only give a cry :—“ Your house is on fire !”— 
“ Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven ts at hand.” 


“One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward ; 
Never doubted clouds would break ; 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would tri- 
umph ; 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake.” 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 373 
a Ete A ao een ei ot Aa Fak ia nh tv oe Ae A Bas Bleed te Ae ot as 
XXXIII.—CLOSING CONFIRMATIONS, 


(Words of various authors.) 


“Now I appeal to all wise men, what an excessive waste of 
treasure hath been within these few years in this land, not in the 
expedient but in the idolatrous erection of temples beautified ex- 
quisitely to outvie the papists, the costly and dear-bought scandals 
and snares of images, pictures, rich copes, gorgeous altar-cloths : 
and by the courses they took, and the opinions they held, it was 
not likely any stay would be, or any end of their madness, where 
a pious pretext is so ready at hand to cover their insatiate desires, 
What can we suppose this will come to? What other materials 
than these have built up the spiritual Babel to the height of her 
abominations? Believe it, Sir, right truly it may be said, that 
Antichrist is Mammon’s son. The sour leaven of human tradi- 
tions, mixed in one putrefied mass with the poisonous dregs of 
hypocrisy in the hearts of prelates that lie basking in the sunny 
warmth of wealth and promotion, is the serpent’s egg that will 
hatch an Antichrist wheresoever, and engender the same monster 
as big, or little, as the lump is which breeds him. If the splendour 
of gold and silver begin to lord it once again in the church . 
we shall see Antichrist shortly wallow here . . . If they had 
one thought upon God’s glory, and the advancement of Christian 
faith, they would be a means that with these expenses, thus pro- 
fusely thrown away, . . . churches and schools might be built 
where they cry out for want, and more added where too few are; 
a moderate maintenance distributed to every painful minister, 
that now scarce sustains his family with bread while the prelates 
revel like Belshazzar with their full carouses in goblets and ves- 
sels of gold snatched from God’s temple ; which I hope the worthy 
men of our land will consider.” 

“To be plainer, Sir, how to solder, how to stop a leak, how to 
keep up the floating wreck of a decayed Theology, betwixt wind 
and water, swimming still upon her own dead lees, that now is 
the deep design of an ecclestastic.” 

(The Author of “Paradise Lost.’’) 


Everywhere but especially in Religion, and in the Christian 
Religion the same as in Jewish and Pagan, reversion and conse- 


374 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


quent degeneration are infallibly indicated by a tendency to 
fabricate and to both impose and accept fabrications for facts. 
‘“‘T said, in my haste, All men are fadricators.” Entire sincerity 
or strict truthfulness is the noblest and rarest of human virtues, 
and its opposite the most debasing and universal of human de- 
pravities. Hence no words of reprobation can be too severe or 
too unceasing for this germinal sin of sins ;—especially when as 
Superstition it contaminates, as Dogmatism corrupts, or as Priest- 
craft degrades such simple teachings and such a sincere and 
holy life as were those of Jesus the Christ. 


“We turn back and think of our fathers and of the narrowness 
of their faith ; yes, it may have been narrow, but what a hold 
they had upon the truth they believed, what a power it was in 
their daily life, 7ust because they had gotten that strong grip upon tt, 
which comes, and can only come, from the exercise of the threefold 
intellectual power, which God has given to every one of us, 

“How many of us now, in this generation, can say that our 
beliefs are matters of strong conviction, that our opinions, 
whether in regard to letters, or art, or religion, are things which 
we have reached by ‘thinking unto them’? Rather, how many 
of us have accepted these things by tradition? Undoubtedly, we may 
not disesteem traditions, but the degradation of our intellectual 
condition of the nineteenth century, as I regard it, is this, that 
the traditions on whose authority we hold things, are so often so 
contemptible as compared with the traditions that bound our 
ancestors. Though it is true that many of them were only crea- 
tures of traditions, their traditions had the dignity of antiquity; 
and came trailing down through the glory of past ages, ennobled 
as being the beliefs and opinions of men and women who had 
suffered and died for their faith. 

“But ours-—where did we get them, and how noble and how 
saintly, and how worthy of the position of leadership, have been 
the men and women in their thought and lives from whom we often 
derive them? Believe me, we could do no better service to our 
own souls than over against this one word, wholeness, to strive 
for zntellectual completeness, to ask on what grounds do L hold truth? 
and to seek to discipline and call into action the power in us that 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 375 


thinks, and so develop a more clear understanding, whether of 
the truths of nature or of revelation, by the exercise of the powers 
God has given us, wherewith to take hold of them. é 

“Now what is the characteristic of the age in which we live, 
as regards its mental attitude? It is an age of very slender and 
shifting beliefs, an age in which the opinions of yesterday in no 
individual case, as a rule, are sure to be the opinions of to-mor- 
row. It is an age in which we are wont to find people moved 
out of their old moorings, and there are more people, I believe, 
than confess it even into the ears of their most intimate friends, 
who have been moved away from all possible beliefs whatever, 
But if this is so, I charge such a condition of things, wherever it 
is found, quite as largely as upon any other influence, upon the 
influence of what I would call ¢nellectual laziness, a curse, I think 
of our generation, greater in proportion than in any that has pre- 
ceded it, certainly for two hundred years.” 

(The Bishop of New Vork, 1887.) 


(The following are from various recent authors.) 


“The author who has not made warm friends and then lost 
them in an hour by writing things that did not agree with the 
preconceived idea of these friends, has either not written well or 
not been read. Every preacher who preaches effectively has two 
doors to his church—one where the people come in and another 
through which he preaches them out. And I do not see how 
any man, even though he be divine, could expect or hope to have 
as many as twelve disciples and hold them for three years with- 
out being doubted, denied, and betrayed. If you have thoughts, 
and honestly speak your mind, Golgotha for you is not far away.” 

Throughout the spiritual, as well as the intellectual, world of 
to-day “there is a deadness which can be felt, like the Egyptian 
darkness of old. There are some passably minor poets, some 
clever essayists, with legions and legions of novelists whose friends 
are booming them into fame; but creative power has ceased. 
There is a dull stagnation, a predominance of vulgar aims 
which goes well with the devotion of the masses everywhere to 
money-making and sport—the only two forms of activity which 
are really carried on with zest. . . . Prediction is, perhaps, 


376 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


useless. ‘The future is on the knees of the gods’, as the old 
Greeks said.” 

“There it was—there! at Smithfield Market, a stone’s throw 
from here, that Ridley and Latimer were burned. Over this 
spot the smoke of martyr fires hovered. And I pray for a time 
when they will hover again.” 

Aye, that is what this easy-going, formalistic, frivolous, money- 
getting, world-seeking, man-pleasing, fable-loving, fiction-read- 
ing, truth-ignoring generation needs, “the rack, the gibbet, 
chains, dungeons, fagots !’””—or those who dare to face and defy 
them. When rich Pharisees adopt a standard of life that can 
only be maintained by devouring the weak and oppressing honest 
toil, “the needs of the hour will bring to the front men who will 
swing the pendulum to the other:side. When society plays tennis 
with truths, and pitch and toss with all the expressions of love and 
friendship, certain ones will begin to confine their speech to ‘yea, 
yea, and nay, nay.’”’ 

When hypocrites make parade, ceremony, and pretense out of 
Religion and the Churches are given over to fashion and form, 
Divine Voices will be heard, saying, “ Thou, when thou prayest, 
enter into thy closet and shut the door.” When sharp schemers 
for or indolent inheritors of wealth are proclaimed saints for their 
noisy patronage of the Lord’s treasury, the same Divine Voices 
will be heard, saying, “Thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not 
thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.” When Religion, 
Philanthropy, Patriotism, and all the Heavenly Graces are made 
matters of merchandise, or of worldly pomp and show, Voices 
in the wilderness, in the synagogues and temples, in the by-ways 
and high-ways will begin to cry out: “O generation of vipers! 
Ye hypocrites! Woe unto you! Woe unto you!” 

“The Quaker is the best authenticated type living of the 
primitive Christian. That the religion of Jesus was a purely re- 
actlonary movement, suggested by the smug complacency and 
voluptuous condition of the times, most thinking men agree. . . . 
The plain garb is only a revulsion from a flutter of ribbons and 
a towering headgear of hues that shame the lily and rival the 
rainbow.” 

When even popes and priests, bishops and preachers, set the ex- 
ample of wearing “ purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously 
every day,” such honest souls as were George Fox, William Penn, 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 377 
ge dea tea Salt aR REY FPR a Me LAU dial nee WN ee ea OY OPS 
and Elizabeth Fry will be “sent from God” to rebuke and con- 
demn by sincerity of speech and simplicity of life. 

“ Quakerism is a protest against an idle, vain, voluptuous, and 
selfish life. It is the natural recoil from insincerity, vanity, and 
gormandism which, growing glaringly offensive, cause certain 
men and women (who are scrupulously honest and genuinely 
true) to come-out and stand firm for plain living and high thinking. 
And were it not for this divine principle in humanity that prompts 
individuals to separate from the mass when sensuousness and in- 
sincerity threaten to hold supreme sway, the race would be snuffed 
out in hopeless night. These men who come-out effect their mis- 
sion, not indeed by making all men ‘Come-outers,’ but by imper- 
ceptibly changing the complexion of the mass.” 

Such are “the light of the world.” Such are “the salt of the 
earth.” Such are the “leaven hidden in the meal.” Such are 
“Christians” who, following the Christ, are ever the Redeemers and 
Saviours of Mankind. 


|The following are from the Areopagitica of Fohn Milton—as 
pertinent now as then. | 


“Tt is no new thing never heard of before, for a parochial 
minister, who has his reward, and is at his Hercules pillars in a 
warm benefice, to be easily inclinable, if he have nothing else 
that may rouse up his studies, to finish his circuit in an English 
Concordance and a topic folio, the gatherings and savings of a 
sober graduateship, a Harmony and a Catena, treading the con- 
stant round of certain common doctrinal heads, attended with 
their uses, motives, marks, and means; out of which, as out of 
an alphabet or sol-fa, by forming and transforming, joining and 
disjoining variously, a little bookcraft, and two hours’ medita- 
tion, might furnish him unspeakably to the performance of more 
than a weekly charge of sermoning: not to reckon up the infinite 
helps of interliniaries, breviaries, synopses, and other loitering 
gear. But as for the multitude of sermons ready printed and 
piled up, on every text that is not difficult, our London trading 
St. Thomas in his vestry, and add to boot St. Martin and St. 
Hugh, have not within their hallowed limits vendible ware of all 
sorts ready made: so that penury he need never fear of pulpit 


378 RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 


provision, having where so plenteously to refresh his magazine. 
But that a bold book may now and then issue forth and give the 
assault to some of his old collections in their trenches, it will 
concern him then to keep waking, to stand in watch, to set good 
guards and sentinels about his received opinions, to walk the 
round and counter-round with his fellow-inspectors, fearing lest 
any of his flock be seduced.” 

““We reckon more than five months yet to harvest ; there need 
not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up the fields are white 
already. When there is much desire to learn, there of necessity 
will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions ; for opinion 
in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under these fan- 
tastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the earnest and zealous 
thirst after knowledge and understanding which God had stirred 
up in this land. What some lament of, we rather should rejoice 
at, should rather praise this pious forwardness among men to re- 
assume the ill-deputed care of their religion into their own hands 
again. A little generous prudence, a little forebearance of one 
another, and some grain of charity might win all these diligencies 
to join and unite into one general and brotherly search after 
truth ; could we but forego this prelatical tradition of crowding 
free consciences and Christian liberties into canon and precepts 
of men.” 

“And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play 
upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously to 
misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who 
ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?” 

“ A wealthy man addicted to his pleasure and to his profits, finds 
Religion to be a traffic so entangled, and of so many piddling 
accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot skill to keep a stock 
going upon that trade. What should he do! Fain he would 
have the name to be religious, fain he would bear up with his 
neighbours in that. What does he, therefore, but resolves to give 
over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care 
and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious 
affairs ; some divine of note and estimation that must be. To 
him he adheres, resigns the whole warehouse of his religion, 
with all the locks and keys, into his custody ; and indeed makes 
the very person of that man his religion ; esteems his associating 
with him a sufficient evidence and commandatory of his own 


RENASCENT CHRISTIANITY. 379 
a ey Can) Nice ML CBSE RY EON WAR ay 
piety. So that a man may say his religion is now no more within 
himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes 
near him, according as that good man frequents the house. He 
entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; his religion 
comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously 
laid to sleep; rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some 
well-spiced bruage, and better breakfasted than He whose morn- 
ing appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany 
and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his 
kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion. 

“Another sort there be, who will straight give themselves up 
into your hands, make them and cut them out what religion ye 
please. There be delights, there be recreations and jolly pas- 
times, that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock 
the tedious year as in a delightful dream. What need they tor- 
ture their heads with that which others have taken so strictly and 
so unalterably into their own purveying? ‘These are the fruits 
which a dull ease and cessation of our knowledge will bring 
forth among the people. How goodly, and how to be wished 
were such an obedient unanimity as this! What a fine conform- 
ity would it starch us all into! Doubtless a staunch and solid 
piece of framework, as any January could freeze together.” 

“ Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing 
herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible 
locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, 
and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam ; purg- 
ing and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of 
heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous and flock- 
ing birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, 
amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would 
prognosticate a year of sects and schisms,” 


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ADDENDA. 


‘““VESTIGIA NULLA RETRORSUM.” 


“ Arise, O north wind, and blow, thou south, upon my garden, 
that the spices thereof may flow out.” 


“I came not to send peace, but asword. . . . Yeshall be 
hated of all men formyname’ssake. . . He that loseth his 
life for my sake shall find it.” 


“The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent 
take it by force. . . . Thou hast hid these things from the 
wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” 


“Negation and criticism have their value. They are symbol- 
ized, by the pioneer in the backwoods, who hews down trees, 
clears away stones, that he may till the soil, sow the seed, and 
reap the harvest. The destruction of false dogmas, and the 
sweeping away of superstition, are only a preparation for the 
birth and growth of a truer, nobler, and more inspiring faith.” 


“We desire to break down every intellectual and spiritual bar- 
rier, to free man’s mind from all that is false, his soul from all 
that is superstitious ; but we do not desire to leave the mind 
empty and the soul bereft of aspiration. We seek to clear away 
error that truth may live; to destroy bigotry that charity may 
abide ; to reject all false gods and devils that the one true God 
may be loved and served, and the real evils of the world attacked 
and removed.” 


“For, after all, what doth it profit a man, if he has succeeded 
in ridding his mind of the bad geology of the book of Genesis, 
the mistaken astronomy of Joshua, and the imperfect physical 
science of Paul, unless he is led to follow truth and practise 
righteousness with more earnestness of purpose than he showed 
before—unless he is enabled to take a larger view of God’s uni- 
verse, and a keener delight in the unselfish service of others?” 


“Truth and liberty will prevail, in spite of feverish efforts to 
restrain them ; for the slow, toilsome, unpopular, narrow path- 
way, which the ‘heretics’ of one age tread alone, becomes in time 
the public highway of the world.” | 

382 


ADDENDA. 383 


ee er 


EXPLANATIONS. 


( Explanations made to the Advance Reviewers of this volume and 
here made to all readers.) 


1.—Why so many explanatory pages ?—The critical nature of 
the volume and its impartial antagonism to all Sects or exclusive 
Systems of Religion, render expedient many explanations in order 
to forestall misunderstandings and to anticipate honest objections, 
A non-sectarian religionist, like a non-partisan patriot, must 
needs define himself; and, even at his best, must expect, as the 
Christ said to such, to “be hated of all men.” 

2.—Why such “antagonism to all Sects or exclusive Systems ”’ 
of Religion ?—As in Science, Philosophy, Society, and Politics 
so, and much more, in Religion the pages of History teach us 
that if there be anything to be hated and opposed as: Satan him- 
self it is a Sect, that 7s, an exclusive System: and, next to this, 
what is called Logical Consistency—that cat-o’-nine-tails with 
which partisans and bigots scourge mankind into their cliques, 
machines, hierarchies, and zsms. From all “ Exclusive Systems,” 
with their “ Logical Consistency,” may the good Lord deliver us! 
Henceforth let nothing be tolerated but such Unions and Co- 
operations (by whatever names they may be called) as will leave 
every man who zs both intelligent and virtuous free to think and to 
act, as well as to worship, according to the dictates of his own 
conscience. Such were the teachings of Jesus and the methods 
of his chief Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. Such, likewise, 
must be the insistent teachings and methods of that Renascent 
Christianity which this volume advocates. 

3.—Why such a variety of Sub-topics and so many quotations ? 
—The volume is designed to serve as a sort of Cyclopedia of 
much that pertains practically as well as theoretically to renascent 
(or revived) Christianity: such as questions of capital and labor, 
the rich and the poor, the lofty and the lowly, the mercenary 
spirit of the age, commercialism in Religion, etc.—as well as the 
underlying doctrines and methods. 


384 ADDENDA. 


4.—Why such incisiveness of language and even violence of 
criticism ?—The volume is designed to be one of (at present) 
many Voices in the Wilderness: and, as such, needs to be “a 
cry,” sharp and of no “uncertain sound.” 

5.—Why disfigure the pages with so many italicized words and 
unnecessary capital letters ?—Emphasized utterance and pictorial 
effects, to the ordinary understanding, are of more account in 
volumes like this (rebuking popular errors and insisting upon re- 
form) than are conventional methods as to the appearance or 
taste of the printed page. 

6.—Why omit the author’s name and (so largely) the names of 
those quoted from ?—That the thought may not be hidden behind 
the thinker and that Truth may be “all in all.’’ Balaam’s ass 
brayed for the Lord as effectively as sounded the ram’s horns of 
the priests or the two silver trumpets of Moses. It matters not 
about the zustrument, the all-important question being, Is it God’s 
Command—/s zt Truth? 

7.—Why divide up the contents into so many short chapters 
and sections?—The volume is not designed to be read through 
consecutively like a treatise, a history, or a novel: but rather, 
like the Bible whose simple teachings it seeks to enforce, to be 
read in convenient lessons, begun and ended anywhere. For 
this reason, too, frequent repetitions and many re-statements have 
been designedly made. 

As for oppositions and reproaches, let us fully understand that 
there is no road leading upward along which one may not meet 
with lions that roar, and reptiles or insects that bite or sting. 
Let us not therefore cease to travel, much less turn backward. 
Rather let us learn of them who “ ¢hrough faith stopped the mouths 
of lions,” and of Him who said, “J give unto you power to tread on 


serpents,” 
THe AUTHOR. 


“The reader of this volume must prepare himself to meet with 
much in it, on the first reading at least, very distasteful to his own 
views. But he must remember that the most helpful teachers are 
those who make us face the facts we wish to shun, and stimulate 
us to the accomplishment of that to which we have not yet at- 
tained. The author’s attitude is that of a reformer—a radical 
reformer,—and the odium he is sure to meet with is that of all 


ADDENDA. 385 
Saalbach Re ee eS eh Ae 
those who, axe in hand, mercilessly attack men’s self-blinded 
errors, and unsparingly lay bare their selfishness and sin.” 


| Written of “Fors Clavigera,” but equally applicable to every book 
worth the reading. | 


“ To be particular, Iam of that Reformed new-cast Religion, 
wherein I dislike nothing but the name: of the same belief our 
Saviour taught, the Apostles disseminated, and the Martyrs con- 
firmed ; but by the sinister ends of Princes, the ambition and 
avarice of Prelates, and the fatal corruption of times, so decayed, 
impaired, and fallen from its native Beauty, that it requires the 
critical and careful hands of these times to restore it to its prim- 
itive Integrity.”"—By the Author of “Religio Medici.” 


“ But I trust they for whom God hath reserved the honor of 
reforming this Church, will easily perceive their adversaries drift 
in thus calling for antiquity. They fear the plain field of the 
Scriptures. The chase is too hot: they seek the dark, the bushy, 
the tangled forest: they would imbosk. They feel themselves 
struck in the transparent streams of Gospel truth: they would 
plunge, and tumble, and think to lie hid in the foul weeds and 
muddy waters of Tradition, where no plummet can reach the 
bottom. But let them beat themselves like whales, and spend 
their oil till they be dragged ashore. Though wherefore should 
we give them so much line for shifts and delays ? Wherefore 
should we not urge only the Gospel, and hold it ever in their 
faces like a mirror of diamond, till it dazzle and pierce their 
misty eyeballs, maintaining the honor of its absolute sufficiency 
and supremacy inviolable ?”"—By the Author of “Paradise Lost,” 
in his First Book of God and Man. 


“Tf I, indeed, upon a Sect-less Creed 
Have newly strung the Jewels of Good Deed, 
Let this one thing for my Atonement plead: 
That Two for One I never did mis-read.” 
—Ferstan Poet, 


386 ADDENDA. 


i 


TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 
(An Open Appeal.) 


“What is truth?” Pilate’s question had already been an- 
swered, “To this end have I been born, and to this end am I 
come into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. 
Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.” 

The Pharisees (like the designing, self-protecting theologians 
of all days) were esoteric or Jesuitical—refusing to “bear wit- 
ness” to any unpopular or émpolitic truth. Nothing that would 
endanger ¢heir pay, praise, place, or personal comfort would they 
ever “ bear witness” to. Truth was whatever was most profitable 
and convenient for themselves ; all else was private opinion. 

“In discussing the doctrine of equivocation, as to how far it is 
lawful on occasion, he maintained ” (a Clergyman) “the Jesuitic 
position that the more straightforward principle is that occasion- 
ally when duties conflict, another duty may be more imperative 
than the duty of truthfulness. He expressed it thus: ‘Make 
yourself clear that you are justified in deception, and then lie 
like a trooper.’”’ 

As a result of this Pharisaism, Esotericism, Jesuitism (call it 
what you will), to-day as ever Sanhedrinéanity, Churchzanity, or 
Sectéanity is the everywhere popular religion. Christéanty, now 
as ever, is the religion of the “ despised and rejected” few. Not 
the Christ (openly, sincerely, self-sacrificingly bearing witness to 
every feature and fraction of Truth as inwardly revealed, even 
though it leads to Gethsemane and the Cross), not 47s Christ of 
the New Testament do the popular theologians preach or the 
masses follow: but my Sanhedrin or my Synagogue, my Church 
or my Sect,—the Christ of whatever party 7 was born in or have 
found it convenient to adhere to. 

Whatever my “ theological authorities” say, ts truth, vociferate 
the multitude—each shouting for his own party. They never 
stop to consider that where there are a score or a hundred, or 
even but two or three, parties, each contradicting all the rest, it 
might be wise for every man to inquire for himself and to “bear 
witness” accordingly. ‘“‘Why even of yourselves judge ye not 
what is right,” and “Let every man be fully persuaded in his 
own mind,” are texts of Scripture which popular priests never 
preach from and their “flocks” never consider—except to con- 
fute and condemn. 


, 


ADDENDA, 387 
Mae I 
“Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain : if 
her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a 
muddy pool of conformity and tradition. If a man believes 
things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so deter- 
MINES Murs boyn. Bethe very Creed he recites becomes his heresy. 
There be—who knows not that there be ?—of Protestants, who 
live and die in as errant credulity and superstitiousness of faith 
as any lay papist of Loretto. . . . Protestant priest-craft 
also flourishes and prevails.” The reason why “ priest-craft”’ 
is able to flourish and prevail, among Protestants as well as 
among Papists, is, that wherever there are people who will not 
think for themselves there the gull-catchers will be gathered 
together. As yet it seems to be fact (as the venerable prime- 
minister of Germany has recently said) that to the masses of 
mankind “truth has no value; it is but the subjective image 
of their fancy or desire ; they feed on appearances ; they believe 
whatever they are told, or whatever may, for the moment, please 
or profit them most.” Hence deceivers flourish and charlatanry 
prevails. 

When Pharaoh, as also Herod and similar tyrant-kings, had 
become so outrageously tyrannical and cruel as to be no longer 
tolerable (says an Eastern writer), he ordered his chief priests to 
proclaim his deity and command all men to worship him, His 
credulous subjects at once became his obsequious slaves and adored 
even his most outrageous cruelties and crimes, So the priest-crafts 
and king-crafts of the world, in all the religions and ages, have 
deified Selfishness and Tyranny into an Infinite Personality who 
does and demands all things for “His own eternal pleasure and 
glory.” The masses of men have been driven by threats of un- 
speakable tortures or coaxed by promises of personal rewards (by 
those who have proclaimed themselves the oracles and prime-min- 
isters of this Infinite Tyrant) to believe or profess to believe in 
the reality of this demoniacal Apotheosis. 

Thus, for centuries untold, Infinite Selfishness and Tyranny 
personified as Deity, has been supposed to be at the head of 
affairs in the Universe—doing and demanding all things for 
“His own eternal pleasure and glory.” He has commanded all 
men to flatter and praise Him, to bow and creep into His pres- 
ence, to fear and tremble before Him, to berate and defame them- 
selves as worms and rebels fit only to be crushed or consumed, to 


388 ADDENDA. 


~ 


dare approach only through His priestly messengers, to whom 
obsequious reverence, unquestioning obedience, and unceasing 
gifts of money and praise must also be rendered. 

To these representations of Infinite Selfishness have been 
added those of Infinite Tyranny, a vengeance-taking God who 
has commanded all the horrible persecutions of history, instigated 
all the wars, and dictated all those outrageously revengeful and 
unspeakably inhuman penal codes which have brutalized man- 
kind, and which prevail (in spite of all pleas for mercy and 
attempts at Penal Code Reforms, Prison Reforms, etc.) in the 
very hearts and hands of “Christians” as well as of Pagans to 
this day. 

By such impositions and representations have prelates and 
priests ruled, kings reigned, oppressors and monopolists prevailed 
—all imitating their deified Selfishness and Tyranny by doing and 
demanding according to and for ¢hezr own ‘pleasure and glory.” 
So has the world been taught that Might is Right. Infinite 
Might is Right—therefore must finite might be right! If men 
adore that Infinite Self-seeker whom they have been taught to 
call God, then will they aspire to be and grow to be like Him— 
to attain to might in order that they may have right. 

So, very widely and very long, the mainspring of all human 
ideals and actions has been Selfishness and Tyranny,—The Right 
of Might. 

Jesus the Christ was the first great Protestant who dared to 
deny and defy all this Demonism of Heaven and Earth—to deny 
and defy even to his latest martyr-breath. There is no God but 
“ Our Father who art in Heaven,” and no divine law nor human 
duty other than those of Sonship and Brotherhood, said the 
Christ. Right is Might in Heaven as on Earth, and whosoever 
does or demands anything on any other ground than that 7 ts 
Right (without any regard to Might) is a devil and not man— 
much less “ Our Father who art in Heaven.” All reverence and 
all religion, all laws of God and duties of Humankind are summed 
up in the Two Commandments, amplified in the Sermon on the 
Mount, and again condensed in the Apostolic teaching—*“ God 
islove, . . . love isofGod . . . Every one that loveth 
is born of God. . . . Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” 

This was Christianity as proclaimed by the Christ and his 
Apostles. Is it not high time for its renascence or revival ? 


ADDENDA. 389 
ee staat cil SOLLA Se Oe es ee PRR LER a AB an? 

To eat, and drink, and be merry—to be “clothed in purple 
and fine linen and fare sumptuously ”—is sad enough and bad 
enough as exhibitions of heartless Self-love even when only ¢em- 
poral beggars are at the door, suffering and unrelieved. But, 
when “clergy and laity,” from prelates and millionaires down- 
ward, can feast and joke while thousands of souls are every hour 
going down to the unspeakable torments of countless millions 
who are already hopelessly groaning and wailing in Hell—alas, 
what monsters of Selfishness are these! Because they have been 
“saved” by the vicarious agonies of another and thereby are sure 
of Eternal Bliss for themselves, in cold blood—-with tearless eyes 
and self-seeking, self-indulging daily lives—they preach sermons 
and recite creeds of eternal weeping and anguish for those who 
cannot or do not believe what they flippantly profess and pro- 
claim! Even in this world their eyes and ears are closed to the 
“Agonies of the Lost’”’—lest their keen relish for feasts and 
fashion, for money-getting and money-spending, for place and 
power, for praise and parade, should be somewhat dulled ; but in 
the next world, as some of them have boldly taught, a chief joy 
of the “saved” will be the miseries of the “damned”! 

‘'T is time for all who are not yet lost to Pity, Reason, and 
Hope—from every corner of the earth—to join in one strong and 
long protest against these “/me-and-eternity Monsters of Selfishness 
who have, in every religion and in every age, trampled upon and. 
ravaged the hearts and consciences of Mankind. ’T is time to 
compel them either to revise their creeds or else to revise their 
lives ; to believe what is decently humane and sweetly reasonable 
as to the fate of their-fellow men, or else to cease the heartless 
pleasures and pamperings of their lives, to become veritable 
Christians—following The Man of Sorrows from his fastings in 
the wilderness to his agony in Gethsemane and his death-cry on 
the Cross. This last would be a life beautiful and humane 
even were there only ¢emporal sorrows to relieve ; but, believing 
in eternal sorrows, any other life is monstrously inhumane. 

Very widely is it a self-evident fact of the Nineteenth Century 
that, in ecclesiasticism as in politics, in Church as in State, partt- 
sanship has been the chief issue, pecuniary or personal ways and 
means the chief object, and sectarian expansion or individual 
triumph the chief end. Officials with all the pay they could get, 
and dignitaries with all the honors, glories, titles, and degrees 


390 ADDENDA. 


“spoilsmen” in 


they could pile upon themselves, have acted as 
Religion and as “ bosses” in the Church, 

The pure glory of God and the pure good of Humankind have 
been thrust behind Sect and Self. What will advance my party 
or sect? What will my salary be and the perquisites? What pay 
and praise will men give to me or to mine if I speak or act, go or 
come, preach or pray, preside as an officer or serve as a mission- 
ary? Such everywhere have been and are the main questions of 
our Ecclesiastical as well as political Nineteenth Century “ spoils- 
men” and “ bosses.” 

How rarely has been, or is, heard the cry—or observed its 
corresponding life-devotions—Let me be as nobody and my sect 
or party as nothing, let me have “not where to lay my head” and 
my band of disciples “‘ be scattered,” leaving me to suffer and to die 
“alone,” if thereby the pure glory of God and the pure good of 
Humankind shall the better be secured! By whatever agency 
or means any good shall be done or truth advanced—be it called 
Protestant or Roman or Greek, Jewish or Pagan, Ethical or 
Infidel, and be it never so unfavorable to me or to mine—*I therein 
do rejoice, yea and will rejoice”! Let me be “accursed” and let 
mine be “counted as dung” rather than that “by any means” 
should be hindered the pure glory of God and the pure good of 
Humankind ! 

Men and Brethren of the approaching Century, let this that 
has just been uttered be our united resolution, our main purpose, 
and our unceasing Gospel of Reform. 

Let the symbol of the Twentieth Century be “The Cross of 
the Christ.” Upon this “Cross” let Se/f and Sect, Personal 
Ambitions and Partisan Motives, be perpetually crucified. In 
this “Cross” let all men glory, and by it alone let every convic- 
tion, purpose, and cause seek to triumph. So shall the Lord's 
Prayer begin to have a speedy fulfilment—* Thy Kingdom come, 
Thy will be done, as in Heaven so on Earth. Amen.” 


THE AUTHOR. 
Epiphany, 1598. 


ADDENDA, 3901 


SAT ee agen a ge acto ELLA Aid wth Mean eo OEE We a gt) Lag a 


TO ALL WHO SEEK THE CHRIST. 


(An Open Appeal.) 


“SIRS, WE WOULD SEE JEsus.”—John xli, 21. 


An immense throng of traditionalists, nineteen centuries deep, 
have crowded themselves in front of Jesus and hidden him from 
the immediate sight and presence of the world, It is high time 
to brush them all aside and say, with much-deserved and unyleld- 
ing reprimand,— 


“SIRS, WE WOULD SEE JEsus.” 


Self-constituted mediators, messengers and agents, professing 
to hold the keys from Jesus himself, lock the doors and bar the 
approach, It is high time to decline their patronage, deny their 
right and say,— 


“SIRS, WE WOULD SEE JESUS.” 


Jesus may be seen in the Beatitudes, Summary of the Com- 
mandments, Parables and other rational teachings and gracious — 
ministrations of the Four Gospels :—all interpolations and ad- 
denda which are contradictory to, or inconsistent with these being 
unsparingly and persistently rejected. Jesus may be seen in all 
the sweetly reasonable teachings and truly Catholic life of the 
Christian Church, from the Apostolic days till now. Jesus may 
be seen as an ever-living, ever-present spiritual personality stand- 
ing and knocking at the door of every heart of man and saying, 
“If any man will open to me I will come in and sup with him 
and he with me.” It is high time to reclaim the unadulterated 
portions of the Four Gospels, the unpolluted Catholic life of 
the Church, and the inalienable private rights of first-handed 
hospitality (which are the God-bestowed heritage of every indi- 
vidual), and to say, with unflinching defiance to whomsoever 
would hinder,— 


“ SIRS, WE WOULD SEE JEsus.” 


Simply this, no more and no less, is what is meant by the title 
and contents of this volume—“ Renascent Christianity, A Fore- 


cast of the Twentieth Century.” ; 
THE AUTHOR. 
Epiphany, 1898. 


392 ADDENDA. 


The Rapid and Baneful Growth of Tradition. 


Tradition starts with a single root and grows, like a banian- 
tree, into a vast overarching labyrinth. Unless continuously 
“cut down” by “the axe” of uasparing criticism and demands 
for historic verification, its rapid self-propagation and wildly 
intertangled growth will so overshadow the minds of men as to 
shut out all light of Truth. “ Ye have made the commandment 
of God of none effect by your Tradition.”—“ Now also the axe 
is laid at the root of the trees.” 


‘‘ The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The captains and the kings depart : 
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice, — 
An humble and a contrite heart. 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget—lest we forget.” 


—The Recessional, KIPLING. 


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